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A Ford Car Can’t Do This 




Grenfell: 

Knight-Errant of the North 


By 

FULLERTON WALDO 

Author of " With Grenfell on the Labrador,' 
“Down the Mackenzie," etc. 



PHILADELPHIA 

GEORGE W. JACOBS & COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 

iniA 


Copyright, 1924, by 
George W, Jacobs Sc Compant 

Ft 1 a <0 


All rights reserved 
Printed in U. S. A. 


nCT 13 *24 

©C1& 808320 


■< / / 


l 


To 

MARY CASTLEMAN DAVIS 








December 1 5 , IQ2%. 


Dear Waldo : 

You who have sampled the salt breezes 
of the North on board my boat, have, I know, 
imbibed the spirit that actuates the belief that 
in a world like ours we can all be knights. I 
know that like ourselves, you look upon the 
world as a field of honor, and its only durable 
prizes the things that we can accomplish in it. 
You see the fun in it all—the real joie de vivre. 

Well, we are doing our best, and it is giving 
us a great return. We haven’t lost the capacity 
to enjoy soft things, but we have learned the 
joys of trying to endure hardness as good sol¬ 
diers. Would to God that every American boy 
would realize that the only real great prize of 
life is to be won by being willing to take blows 
and willing to suffer misunderstanding and op¬ 
position, so long as he may follow in the foot¬ 
steps of that most Peerless Knight that ever 
lived; He who saw that the meaning of life was, 
that in it we might, wherever we are, be always 
trying to do good. 

Ever your friend, 

Wilfred T. Grenfell. 



CONTENTS 


I. 

A Boy and the Sea 

- 

. 

- 

n 

II. 

School—and After 

- 

. 

_ 

22 

III. 

Westward Ho! for Labrador 

- 

- 

35 

IV. 

Hauled by the Huskies 

- 

- 

- 

74 

V. 

Some Real Sea-Dogs - 

- 

- 

- 

97 

VI. 

Hunting with the Eskimo 

- 

- 

- 

H4 

VII. 

Little Prince Pomiuk - 

- 

- 

- 

137 

VIII. 

Captured by Indians - 

- 

- 

- 

147 

IX. 

Alone on the Ice 

- 

- 

- 

162 

X. 

A Fight with the Sea 

- 

- 

- 

183 

XI. 

The Kidnappers - 

- 

- 

- 

201 

XII. 

When the Big Fish « Strike In 

»» 

- 

230 

XIII. 

Birds of Many a Feather 

- 

- 

. 

238 

XIV. 

Beasts Big and Little 

- 

- 

- 

249 

XV. 

The Keeper of the Light 

- 

- 

- 

264 

XVI. 

Through the Blizzard 

- 

- 

- 

284 

XVII. 

Why the Doctor was Late 

- 

- 

296 


The incidents of the first chapter are founded strictly 
on fact, but slight liberties have been taken with minor 
details here and elsewhere. For example, the Doctor is 
sometimes represented as talking with persons whose 
names stand for types rather than individuals; and it is 
the spirit rather than the letter of the conversations 
that is reported. 



















LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


A Ford Car Can’t Do This . . Frontispiece 

Map of Labrador . . . Facing p . 36 

Castles and Cathedrals of Ice Afloat “ “ 94 

Let’s Go!.« « no 

“ Who Said Halt ? ” . . . “ “198 

Off Duty ..... 

Where Four Feet Are Better Than 
Two 


290 

























Grenfell: Knight-Errant of 
the North 


i 

A BOY AND THE SEA 

11 1 WONDER if Jim is ever going to get back! 
My, isn’t it an awful storm! ” 

Wilfred Grenfell, then a small boy, stood at 
the window of his home in Cheshire, England, 
looking out across the sea-wall at the raging, 
seething waters of the Irish Sea. 

The wind howled and the snowflakes beat 
against the window-panes as if they were tiny 
birds that wanted to get in. 

“ Mother,” he pleaded, “ can I put on my 
sweater and my rubber boots and go down on 
the beach and see if I can find Jim? ” 

“ Yes,” said his mother. “ But wrap your¬ 
self up warmly, and don’t stay long—and don’t 
take any risks, will you, dear? ” 

Almost before the words were out of her 
mouth, Wilf was down the stairs and out in the 
roadway, where fishermen watched their little 


12 KNIGHT-ERRANT OE THE NORTH 

boats as they tossed at anchor riding out the 
storm. 

Wilf stepped up to a big, grizzled mariner 
he knew, whom every one called Andy. 

“ Andy, have you seen Jim? ” 

“ Jim who? ” 

“ Jim Anderson.” 

“ Was he the chap that went out in the Daisy 
Bell about four hours ago? ” 

“ Yes,” said Wilf, trying to control himself, 

“ and he wanted me to go with him, but-” 

His words were cut short by a great wave 
that hurled itself against the wall. The spray 
leapt high over the stones and drenched Andy 
and the boy. 

“ It’s lucky ye didn’t go, boy,” said Andy, 
solemnly. “We’re watchin’ for the boat now. 
My brother was on her, and two cousins o’ my 
wife. She was a little craft, and a leaky one. 
We were goin’ to patch her up an’ make her fit. 

But we waited too long. An’ now-” He 

drew his rough sleeve across his eyes. 

The wind howled round their ears and the hail 
was smiting and stinging as though the storm 
had a devilish mind to drive them away. 




A BOY AND THE SEA 13 

“Why don’t you go out in a boat and get 
them? ” pleaded Wilf. 

Andy shook his head. “ It ain’t that we’re 
afraid,” he said. “ But there ain’t a boat we 
have here that could ride those waves. The 
coast-guard tried—and now look! ” He pointed 
to a heap of broken, white-painted timbers lying 
in the roadway, half-hidden from them by the 
whooping blizzard that threw its dizzying veils 
of snow before their eyes. 

“That’s the coast-guard’s boat!” exclaimed 
Andy. “ The sea picked her up, she did, and 
threw her right over the sea-wall as if she was an 
egg, an’ mashed her flat. That shows how much 
of a chance there’d be for us to get through an’ 
get back, supposin’ we could find ’em. No, 
boy, we’ve got to wait.” 

“Look!” cried the lad, excitedly. “Please 
look, Andy. What’s that bobbing up and down 
in the surf? ” 

The fisherman put to his eyes his worn and 
rusted spy-glass. 

Then he gritted his teeth and bit his lip. 
“ You stay up here on the road, boy. I got to 
climb down there and make sure.” 


14 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

Wilf stood at the sea-wall. He was barely 
tall enough to look over it. 

He watched Andy clamber painfully down 
over the great rocks piled high against the outer 
face of the wall. 

Every now and then a big wave would rise 
up, a green monster of hissing foam and fury, 
and throw itself on him like a wild animal try¬ 
ing to scare him back. 

But men of that breed are not afraid. The 
stalwart figure, though often knocked down and 
half drowned, would struggle to his feet again 
and go on. 

Wilf saw Andy pick up the—yes, it was a 
body and put it on his shoulder, and come 
staggering toward the rocks. Then he clam¬ 
bered tediously over the stones, and Wilf saw 
whose body it was that Andy was carrying. 

It was his boy friend Jim, who had gone out 
only a few hours before, with the sun on his fair 
hair, laughing and whistling and shouting his 
gay farewell. “ Be back in a little while, Wilf! 
Bring you a nice big fish for your supper. You 
want to have a good hot fire ready to cook it. 
Better change your mind and come along.” 


A BOY AND THE SEA 


15 


Never again would he hear that cheery hail of 
invitation to adventure. 

Andy laid the little half-frozen figure down, 
carefully, tenderly, beside the wall. 

“ Too bad! ” he said, “ too bad! But the sea 
can be terrible cruel to the sons o’ men. I won¬ 
der we keep goin’ back to her as we do. Now 
I got to take the poor boy to his mother.” 

He picked up the body, and trudged off into 
the storm, toward the fishing-huts. 

Wilf went back to his own house, thinking 
about the sea and how cruel it had been. 

“ Mother,” he said, as they sat together talk¬ 
ing over the tragedy, “ isn’t it queer that you 
can have such fun with the sea sometimes, swim¬ 
ming in it and rowing on it, and then all of a 
sudden it gets mad and kills somebody you love? 
Just suppose I’d gone out in the boat with Jim! ” 

Wilf thought it fine fun to go swimming, with 
the strong salt breeze to dry him off like a towel 
afterwards. In his ears the crying of sea-birds 
against grey clouds was the sweetest of music. 
He loved to have the surf knock him about, and 
the sun burn him red, and he didn’t mind if pink 
jellyfish stung him now and then or a crab got 


16 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

hold of his toes. The roar of the surf sang him 
to sleep at night like an old nurse. 

One day when the spring came, Wilf went out 
on the salt marshes, his gun over his shoulder, to 
shoot wild ducks. 

He was a regular water-baby. 

Round about him all sorts of sea-birds were 
wheeling and crying. The swift tidal currents 
found their way up-stream through the marshes. 

Wilf, hot and tired, threw the gun on the sand, 
took.off his clothes, and plunged into the clear, 
cold water. 

It carried him along like a boat, and he 
clambered out on a green island. 

“ It’s just like Robinson Crusoe!” he told 
himself. “ Here I am, all alone, and nobody in 
sight. I can do just as I please!” 

He ran up and down in the sunlight, laughing 
and shouting in the wind and throwing his arms 
about. 

How good it felt to be alive! 

“ Guess I’ll go back and get the gun,” he said, 
and see if I can’t shoot one of those wild ducks. 
I’ll make mother a present of it for dinner to¬ 
night.” 


A BOY AND THE SEA 17 

It wasn’t so easy to swim back. He had to 
fight against the current that had carried him to 
the little green island. 

It was less effort to leave the stream and 
scramble through the reeds along the muddy 
bank. 

Sometimes a stone or a shell hurt his foot, 
but he only laughed and went on. 

“ You just wait, you ducks,” he said. “ You’d 
better look out when I begin to shoot! ” 

He came to where the gun lay on his clothes, 
where he had been careful to place it so that no 
sand would get into the muzzle. 

He loaded it and fired, and it kicked his bare 
shoulder like a mule. 

But he had the satisfaction of seeing one of 
the ducks fall into the water, where the stream 
was at its widest, perhaps a hundred feet from 
the bank. 

Here the water ran swift and deep, and it was 
going to be a hard fight to get that bird. 

“ I wish I had Rover with me now! ” he told 
himself. Usually the dog went with him and 
was the best of company,—but this time he must 
be his own retriever. 


18 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

He plunged into the stream again and swam 
with all his might toward the bird. 

If he had been getting it for himself, he would 
have been tempted to give up. But he couldn’t 
bear to quit when he thought of what a treat it 
would be for the whole family—a nice, fat, 
juicy, wild duck. 

The bird was being carried rapidly up¬ 
stream by the force of the waters. 

“ No, sir! ” said Wilf to something inside him 
that wanted to go back. “ We’re going to get 
that bird if we have to swim half-way across 
England!” 

It was almost as if the bird had come back to 
life. It seemed to be swimming away from him. 

Painfully, inch by inch, he began to gain on it. 
At last, when his strength was all but gone, he 
caught up with it, and clutched the feathery 
prize. Then he swam with it to the shore. 

Panting and happy, he lay down on the bank 
a moment to rest. 

“ The family won’t have to go without dinner 
after all!” he laughed. 

He grabbed the duck by the feet, flung it over 
his shoulder, and trotted back to his clothes and 


A BOY AND THE SEA 


19 


the gun. It was fun to go home with the bird 
that he had shot himself. But if there had been 
no bird, he would have been whistling or sing¬ 
ing just as happily. 

On one of his birthdays he was out in the 
wide, lonely marshes five miles from home. It' 
was more fun for him to go hunting, barefoot, 
than to have a party with a frosted cake and 
twinkling candles. So, as the nicest kind of 
birthday'present, he had been given the whole 
day, to do just as he pleased. 

To-day, as there was still on the ground the 
snow of early spring, he wore shoes, but it was 
cold work plashing about in those slimy pools 
and the slippery mud among the sedges. 

The birds he was after especially were the 
black-and-white “ oyster catchers,” which when 
it was low tide would always be found making 
a great racket above the patches of mussels 
which formed their favorite food. 

They were handsome birds, with gay red bills, 
and a bunch of them made a fine showing when 
the little hunter carried them home over his 
shoulder. 

This time he had shot several of the birds, and 


20 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

then the problem was to get them and bring 
them in. 

There they lay—away off yonder, on a little 
tuft of the coarse green meadow-grasses, but be¬ 
tween the hunter and the game was a swirling 
inlet of salt water, and he couldn’t tell by look¬ 
ing at it how deep it was. 

So, gun over shoulder, he started cautiously 
to wade out toward that birthday dinner he 
meant to bring home. 

First it was calf-deep—then knee-deep—then 
nearly waist-deep. 

The cold water made his teeth chatter, but he 
didn’t care about that. All he thought of was 
the precious gun. That was his chief treasure, 
and his first joy in life. 

Deeper he went, and nearer he got —the gun 
now held in both hands high over his head, as he 
floundered along. 

And just then a dreadful thing happened. 

He stepped into a hole, and it suddenly let 
him down so that the water was over his head, 
and his upreached arms, and the precious gun 
too! 

In the shock and the surprise, he let go of the 


A BOY AND THE SEA 


21 


weapon, and it sank out of sight. He had no 
fear of drowning, and he struck out manfully 
when he found himself in the deep water. 

But he had to give up the idea of finding the 
gun, and the birds were left where they lay on 
the farther side of the treacherous channel. 

It was a long, hard run home, over those five 
wet and freezing miles, and the boy’s heart was 
heavy because of the loss of that pet gun. 

All the while he was learning everything that 
outdoors could teach him, and he owes to that 
breezy, sun-shot, storm-swept gipsying during 
the summer vacations the beginning of the stock 
of good health that has made him such a strong, 
useful, happy man, able to do no end of hard 
work without getting tired, and always finding 
it fun to live. 


II 


SCHOOL—AND AFTER 

THIS Robin Hood kind of life in the open 
went on till Wilf was fourteen. Then he was 
sent away to Marlborough College—a boy’s 
school which had 600 pupils. Marlborough is 
in the Chalk Hills of the Marlborough Downs, 
seventy-five miles west of London. The build¬ 
ing, dating from 1843, is on the site of a castle of 
Henry I. 

The first day Wilf landed there he looked 
about him and felt pretty forlorn. 

“ I wonder if I’ll ever get to know all those 
boys? ” he asked himself. 

When he was at home, he had a room all his 
own or shared one with his brother. Here it 
was so different. 

He counted the beds in his dormitory. There 
were twenty-five of them. “ How can a fellow 
ever get to sleep in such a crowd? ” he wondered. 
u Perhaps they’ll toss me in a blanket, the way 


SCHOOL—AND AFTER 23 

they did in ‘Tom Brown at Rugby.’ Well, if 
they try anything like that, they’ll find I’m ready 
for them! ” 

He felt the mattress. “ Pretty hard com¬ 
pared with the beds at home, but no matter. 
Let’s see what the schoolroom is like.” 

So he went into the “ Big School ” as it was 
called. Three hundred boys were supposed to 
study there. 

“Gracious!” exclaimed Wilf. “Don’t see 
how a fellow ever gets his lessons in a place like 
this.” 

It was as busy and as noisy as a bear-garden. 
Here and there a boy with his hands over his 
ears was really looking at a book. But most of 
the boys were talking, laughing, singing as if 
there were no such thing as lessons. 

Sometimes a master might look in, or a moni¬ 
tor would wander down the aisle. But most of 
the time there was nothing to keep a boy from 
following his own sweet will. 

“ I say, Smith! ” one called out, “ lend me a 
shilling, will you? I want to buy Grisby’s white 
rat, and I haven’t got enough.” A fat boy who 
looked as if he thought mostly of meal-times was 


24 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 


telling everybody in his neighborhood: “I’ve 
just got a box from home. Jam and fruitcake 
and gooseberry tarts. Come and see me to-night 
in the dormitory, you fellows.” 

Somebody else called out: “ My knife’s so dull 
I’ll never get my name carved on this desk. 
Give me your knife, Willoughby: it’s sharper.” 

There were boys having fencing-matches with 
rulers across the aisle. There were others who 
took no end of pains to make paper arrows, or 
spitballs that would stick to the ceiling. In the 
corners of their desks might be bird’s eggs in 
need of fresh air. Some of the boys were read¬ 
ing adventure stories, covered up to look like 
school-books. 

In the midst of this Babel, you were expected 
to get your lessons as well as you could. 

When it came to meal-times, you went into 
what was called “ Big Hall,” where four hun¬ 
dred boys ate together. 

The beef was tough enough to make a suit¬ 
case: the milk was like chalk and water: the 
potatoes would have done to plaster a ceiling or 
cement a wall. How different it all was from 
the good though simple fare at home! 


SCHOOL—AND AFTER 25 

“Want to join a brewing company?” asked 
the boy across the table. 

“What’s a brewing company?” inquired 
Wilf. 

“ We buy sausages and cook ’em in saucepans 
over the fire—when we can find a fire.” 

“ Yes, you can count me in,” said Wilf. So 
it didn’t make so much difference after that, if 
he couldn’t eat what was set before him at the 
table. 

But usually the boys brought robust appetites 
to their meals, for they went in heavily for all 
forms of athletics. The boys who didn’t make 
the teams had to drill in the gymnasium or run 
round and round an open air track a mile and a 
half long. If you shirked, the boys themselves 
saw to it that you got punished. 

When Wilf came home to Cheshire for the 
long vacations he found some poor little raga¬ 
muffins who had no fun in their lives, and started 
a club for them in his own house. There were 
no boy scouts in those days, when Sir Robert 
Baden-Powell and Ernest Thompson Seton 
were little boys themselves. It was just taken 
for granted that boys would be boys, and it was 


26 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

hoped that they would grow up to be good men, 
if after school hours they were allowed to run 
loose in the streets. But Grenfell had a differ¬ 
ent idea. 

He turned the dining-room on Saturday even¬ 
ings into a gymnasium. 

He pushed aside the table and chucked the 
chairs out of the window. 

“ Now any of you fellows who want to can 
get busy on the parallel bars,” he told them, “ or 
if you like you can go out into the back yard and 
pitch quoits. I’ll take on anybody who wants 
to box with me.” 

The boys thought it was heaps of fun. They 
could hardly wait for Saturday night to come, 
because it meant the rare sport of banging 
another boy in the nose, which was much more 
satisfactory than throwing stones at a police¬ 
man. 

After he was big enough, he used to go to 
lodging-houses where men slept who were down 
and out. He knew that drink had brought them 
low, and he wanted to show tjhem better things 
to do. 

The saloon-keepers were against him from the 


SCHOOL—AND AFTER 27 

start. He was depriving them of some of their 
best customers. 

“ You’re spoiling our business/' they grum¬ 
bled. 

At last they made up their minds they would 
“ get ” him. 

They collected a “ gang ” and one night they 
locked the door, backed up against it, and 
shouted: 

“ Come on, young feller! We're goin' to fix 
you!" 

They rolled up their sleeves, clenched their 
fists, and sailed into him full-tilt like a big, angry 
crowd of human bees. 

Grenfell was ready for them. It was like a 
fight in the movies. 

He had kept himself in fine condition, for he 
was in training to play football and he was 
known to be a first-rate boxer. 

They flew at him, roaring to encourage one 
another. There were six or eight of them, but 
they were afraid of his fists. 

“ Come on, boys! ” 

“ Hit 'im a good 'un, Bill! 'E's spoilin' our 
business, that’s what 'e’s doin’.” 


28 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

“ Push in his face. ’Ammer ’im good ’n’ 
proper! ” 

“ We’ll show ’im what’s what! ” 

“ ’E’s a noosance. Le’s get rid of ’im. 
Lemme get at ’im once. I’ll show ’im! ” 

So they came on, clumsy with drink, but 
their maudlin outcries didn’t scare Grenfell a 
bit. 

He was waiting for them,—cool, quiet, de¬ 
termined. 

Their diet was mostly bad ale and beer, or 
whiskey: Grenfell was all muscle, from constant 
exercise and wholesome diet—the roast beef of 
old England, whole wheat bread, plenty of rich 
milk. 

They were no match for him. 

On they came, one after another. The first 
lunged out heavily; Grenfell parried the blow 
with his right hand and landed his left on the 
jaw. The ruffian fell to the floor like a log of 
wood and lay there. As he fell, he clutched at 
the corner of the table and overturned it with a 
mighty crash on top of him. 

The second man got a blow on the nose that 
sent him over to the corner to wipe away the 


SCHOOL—AND AFTER 29 

blood. The rest Grenfell laid out flat on the 
floor in one, two, three order. 

They came at him again, those who were able 
to go on. They got their arms around him but 
he threw them off. They kicked him and he 
knocked them down again. They bit and 
clawed and scratched and used all the foul 
tactics that they knew. 

They tried to get him from both sides—they 
rushed at him from the front and the rear at the 
same time. 

Agile as a cat he turned and faced them 
whichever way they came, and those quick, hard 
fists of his shot out and hit them on the chin or 
on the nose till they bled like stuck pigs and 
bawled for mercy. 

Grenfell stood there amid the wrecked furni¬ 
ture, his clothes torn, bleeding and triumphant. 
“Want any more?” he smiled. 

When they saw that all combined they were 
no match for this wildcat they had roused to 
action, they said: 

“ Well, le’s call it quits. Le’s have peace.” 

They never tackled him again. They didn’t 
know much, to be sure, but they knew when 


30 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 
they had had enough of “ a first-class fighting 
man.” 

Then Grenfell started camping-parties with 
poor boys who hadn’t any money to spend for 
holidays. The first summer he had thirteen at 
the seashore. 

A boy had to take a sea-bath before he got his 
breakfast. No one could go in a boat unless he 
could swim. The beds were hay-stuffed burlap 
bags. A lifeboat retired from service was more 
fun than Noah’s Ark to keep the happy com¬ 
pany afloat for a fishing-party or a picnic. 

Next year there were thirty boys: then the 
number grew to a hundred, and more. Not one 
life was lost. How they loved it all! Espe¬ 
cially when the boat, twelve boys at the oars, 
came plunging in, on the returning tide, with the 
boys all singing at the top of their voices: 

“ Here we come rejoicing, 

Pulling at the sweeps 99 

to the rhythmic tune of “ Bringing in the 
Sheaves.” Then, when the boat’s keel slid into 
the sand, it was a mad rush for the best supper 
boys ever ate. 






SCHOOL—AND AFTER 


31 


His school days over, instead of going to Ox¬ 
ford University, Grenfell chose to enter the 
London Hospital, so as to take his examinations 
at London University later, and become a doctor. 

While Grenfell was in the hospital, murder 
was quite the fashion in London. Many a time 
his patients had a policeman sitting behind a 
screen at the foot of the bed, ready to nab them 
if they got up and tried to climb out of a win¬ 
dow. 

One day, Sir Frederick Treves said to him: 
“ Go to the North Sea, where the deep-sea fish¬ 
ermen need a man like you. If you go in Jan¬ 
uary, you will see some fine seascapes, anyway. 
Don’t go in summer when all of the old ladies 
go for a rest.” 

Grenfell turned the idea over and over in his 
mind. He had always loved the sea and been 
the friend of sailors and fishermen. He liked 
the thought of the help he could be as a doctor 
among them. So he decided to cast in his lot 
with the fishermen who go from England’s East 
Coast into the brawling North Sea. 

Yarmouth, about 120 miles northeast of 
London, is the headquarters of the herring fish- 


32 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

eries, which engage about 300 vessels and 3^000 
men. A short distance off the shore are sand¬ 
banks, and between these and the mainland 
Yarmouth Roads provides a safe harbor and a 
good anchorage for ships drawing eighteen or 
nineteen feet of water. 

So one pitch-black and rainy night Grenfell 
packed his bag and went to Yarmouth. At the 
railway-station he found a retired fisherman 
with a cab that threatened to fall apart if you 
looked at it too hard. They drove a couple of 
miles alongshore in the darkness, and found 
what looked like two posts sticking out of the 
sand. 

“ Where’s the ship? ” asked Grenfell. 

“ Those are her topmasts,” answered the sea- 
dog. “ Tide’s low. The rest of her is hidden 
by the wharf.” 

Grenfell scrambled over a hillock and a dim 
anchor-lantern showed him the tiny craft that 
for many days and nights was to be his tossing 
home in the great waters. 

In answer to his hail, a voice called back 
cheerily: “ Mind the rigging; it’s just tarred and 
greased.” 



SCHOOL—AND AFTER 


33 


But Grenfell was already sliding down it, 
nimble as a cat, though it was so sticky he had 
to wrench his hands and feet from it now and 
then. 

The boat was engaged in peddling tobacco 
among the ships of the North Sea fishing-fleet, 
and for the next two months no land was seen, 
except two distant islands: and the decks were 
never free from ice and snow. 

Aboard many of the boats to which they came 
the entire crew, skipper and all, were ’prentices 
not more than twenty years old. These lads got 
no pay, except a little pocket-money. Many of 
the crew were hard characters, and the young 
skippers were harder still. Often they had been 
sent to sea from industrial schools and reforma¬ 
tories. 

One awkward boy had cooked the “ duff ” for 
dinner and burned it. So the skipper made him 
take the ashes froro the cook’s galley to the fore- 
rigging, climb to the cross-tree with the cinders 
one by one, and throw them over the cross-tree 
into the sea, repeating the act till he had dis¬ 
posed of the contents of the scuttle. 

A boy who had not cleaned the cabin as he 


34 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 
should was given a bucketful of sea water, and 
was made to spend the whole night emptying it 
with a teaspoon into another bucket, and then 
putting it back the same way. 

Most of the boys were lively and merry, and 
always ready for a lark. 

Grenfell, who has never been able to forget 
that he was once a boy, got along famously with 
them, and was hail-fellow-well-met wherever he 
went. 

Once, when he was aboard a little sailing- 
vessel, he was playing cricket on the deck, and 
the last ball went over the side. 

He dived after it at once, telling the helms¬ 
man to “ tack back.” When the helmsman saw 
Grenfell struggling in the water, he got so 
rattled that it was a long time before he could 
bring the boat near him. 

At last Grenfell managed to catch hold of the 
end of a rope that was thrown to him and climb 
aboard. 

But the cricket ball was in his hand! 


Ill 

WESTWARD HO! FOR LABRADOR 

“ In eighteen hundred and ninety-two 
Grenfell sailed the ocean blue-” 

from Yarmouth to Labrador in a ninety-ton 
ketch-rigged schooner. 

This wasn’t such an abrupt change of base as 
it sounds, for it meant that the Royal Mission 
to the Deep Sea Fishermen, which works in the 
North Sea, had decided to send a “ Superintend¬ 
ent” to the coast of the North Atlantic, east of 
Canada and north of Newfoundland, where 
many ships each summer went in quest of the 
cod. 

If you will look on the map, you will readily 
see how Labrador lies in a long, narrow strip 
along the coast from the mouth of the St. 
Lawrence to Cape Chidley. This strip belongs 
to the crown colony of Newfoundland, the big 
triangular island to the south of the Straits of 
Belle Isle, and Newfoundland is entirely inde¬ 
pendent of the Dominion of Canada. Fisher¬ 
men when they go to this region always speak of 


36 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 
going to “ the Labrador,” and they call it going 
“ down,” not “ up,” when it is a question of far¬ 
ing north. 

The tract that lies along the north shore of the 
St. Lawrence, west of the narrow strip, is also 
called Labrador—but it belongs to Canada. 
Generally “ Labrador ” is used for the part that 
belongs to Newfoundland. 

“ Labrador ” itself is a queer word. It is 
Portuguese. Ie means a yeoman farmer. The 
name was given to Greenland in the first half of 
the sixteenth century by a farmer from the 
Azores who was first to see that lonesome, chilly 
country. Thence the name was moved over to 
the peninsula between Hudson Bay and the 
Atlantic. 

Cabot sailed along the coast in 1498, but the 
interior remained unseen by white men till the 
Hudson’s Bay Company began to plant their 
trading-stations and send their agents for furs in 
1831. 

Jacques Cartier said Labrador was “ the land 
God gave to Cain,” and that there was “ not one 
cartload of earth on the whole of it.” Along 
the coast are mountains rising to 7,000 or even 



Labrador 










































































WESTWARD HO! FOR LABRADOR 37 

8,000 feet. There are many lakes inland, 50 to 
100 miles in length. Hamilton Inlet is 150 
miles long, and from two to 30 miles wide. The 
Hamilton River which empties into it, in twelve 
miles descends 760 feet, with a single drop of 
350 feet at the Grand Falls, the greatest in North 
America, surpassing even Niagara. 

The population is about 14,500 in more than 
half a million square miles. There are some 
3,500 Indians, 2,000 Eskimos, and 9,000 whites 
(along the coast and at the Hudson’s Bay posts). 

It was to such a “ parish ” that Grenfell came 
in 1892, that he might give the fishermen the 
benefit of his surgical knowledge and practical 
experience acquired not only on the land but 
aboard the tossing ships in the North Sea. 

A ninety-ton boat is a tiny craft in which to 
make the voyage across the Atlantic. Grenfell 
must have known just how Columbus felt, four 
hundred years ago, when he said to the sailors 
of his tiny caravels “ Sail on! sail on! ” 

First there were head winds for eleven days. 

“Wonder if the wind’s ever goin’ to quit 
Mowin’ against us!” muttered a sailor, as he 
coiled a rope to make a bed for a dog in the 


38 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

stern. “ I’m about fed up with this kind o’ 
thing.” 

The man to whom he spoke was in his bare 
feet, washing the deck with the hose. “ What 
does anybody ever wanna go to Labrador for, 
anyhow? ” he grumbled back. “ It’s a lot better 
in the North Sea. More sociable. You get 
letters from home an’ tobacco regular. An’ you 
can see somebody once in a while.” 

“ Shore leave’s no good to a fellow in Labra¬ 
dor,” the first man went on, as he watched the 
dog turn round and round before lying down. 
“ Ain’t no place to go. No movies nor nuthin’, 
just fish an’ rocks an’ people lookin’ thin an’ 
half-starved.” 

“ You ever been there? ” 

“ No, but I was talkin’ with fellows that got 
shipwrecked there once. Gee whiz, what’s 
that? ” 

11 That? That’s an iceberg. Didn’t you ever 
see an iceberg before? ” 

“ No. Looks like a ship under full sail, 
don’t she? ” 

To the north out of the grey mist on the water 
loomed a mountain of ice. 


WESTWARD HO! FOR LABRADOR 39 


“ Glad we didn’t run into the old thing,” the 
dog’s friend went on. “ They say what you see 
stickin’ out o’ the water’s only a small part of it.” 

“Yes, that’s right. ’Bout six-sevenths is 
under water. Lemme tell you, the fellers that 
sail a schooner like this up to the fishin’ grounds 
have gotta know what they’re about. Ever hear 
about the Queen an’ how she got wrecked? ” 

“ No.” 

“ Well, it was a fog like it is over yonder, an’ 
the Queen was off Gull Island, close to Cape St. 
John. She didn’t know where she was. They 
didn’t have no lighthouse in them days. 

“ Well sir, it was December, long toward 
Christmas an’ the wind was howlin’ like a pack 
o’ wolves. The poor little ship—she wa’n’t 
much bigger’n this here boat o’ ours—drove 
plumb on the rocks. 

“ There was six passengers, one of ’em a lady. 
One of the men was a doctor—he was her 
brother. 

“ They got off the boat when she drove ashore 
an’ they climbed up onto the top o’ the island. 
They didn’t have nothin’ with ’em ’ceptin’ only 
an old piece of a sail. What was that to feed 


40 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

on, all winter? They knew there wouldn’t be 
anybody cornin’ that way till the nex’ spring. 

“ The crew, they stayed on board: they said 
they was goin’ to get off some o’ the stuff for ’em 
all to eat while they was cooped up on the island 
waitin’ for spring. 

“ But the storm done ’em dirt. The wind 
came on to blow harder’n ever, an’ pretty soon 
the sea she just picked up the ship an’ hauled her 
off and—crickety-crack!—she went slam-bang to 
pieces on the Old Harry Shoals. Didn’t have 
no more chance than a paper bag at a picnic. 
No sir, there weren’t one man saved out o’ the 
whole crowd. 

“ So there was them six people stuck up on top 
o’ the rock.” 

“ Did they have to stay there all winter? ” 

“ Now you wait a minute. I’m a-tellin’ you. 
Some time ’long in April there was a hunter 
come that way duck-shootin’. 

“ He shot a duck an’ it dropped in the big 
waves runnin’ and jumpin’ on the beach. 

“ He got out o’ the boat to get it—an’ it 
weren’t there! 

“ 4 Mercy on us! ’ says he. 1 I shot that duck 


WESTWARD HO! FOR LABRADOR 41 

just as sure as I’m soaked clean through. It 
musta fell right here. What’s become o’ it? 
Where’s it gone to? ’ 

“ He looked round and looked round like 
Robinson Crusoe huntin’ fer somebody. He 
looked up an’ he looked down, an’ it wa’n’t no 
use. Wa’n’t no duck there. 

“ 1 It musta been magic,’ he says. ‘ Magic. 
Somethin’ queer about this place! ’ 

“ Then he sees little pieces o’ wood churnin’ 
around in the foam. 

“ ‘ What’s happened here? ’ he says to himself. 
1 Musta been a ship went to pieces here some 
time.’ ’Cause he found some o’ the splinters 
had letters on ’em showin’ they used to be parts 
o’ boxes, an’ pretty soon he finds a life-preserver 
that says on it' The Queen, St. John’s.’ 

“ 1 Guess I’ll climb up to the top o’ the rock 
an’ take a look,’ says he. So up he climbs, the 
birds flappin’ round him an’ screamin’ ’cause 
they’re afraid maybe he’s goin’ to hurt their 
eggs. 

“ Up an’ up he dumb, an’ he gets up to the 
top. The grass is long an’ green an’ the soft 
yellow buttercups is pretty—but what he 


42 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

sees lyin’ there in the buttercups ain’t pretty at 
all. 

“ Six dead bodies lyin’ there stretched out, 
with the piece o’ the old torn sail over ’em. 
The bodies is failin’ to pieces, but in the fingers 
o’ one is some flesh torn out o’ the next one to 
it. 

“ Then he finds a little book with writin’ in it 
where one of ’em had been writin’ down as long 
as he could what happened. 

“ Well sir, what the writin’ said was this. He 
couldn’t hardly make it out it was so faint. It 
said by an’ by they drew lots to see who was to 
be killed for the rest to eat.” 

Here the man with the dog drew a long sigh 
and said: “ That’s a fine kind of a country to be 
cornin’ to, ain’t it, where things like that can 
happen? I’m glad I ain’t in Doc Grenfell’s 
rubber boots. He’s goin’ to stay. I thank my 
lucky stars I don’t have to. I’ll sure be glad to 
get back to Yarmouth once more. I used to 
think it was a hole in the ground, but it’s heaven 
compared to what we’re cornin’ to.” 

u Wait a minute, wait a minute!” said the 
other, u I ain’t finished tellin’ you. Lemme get 


WESTWARD HO! FOR LABRADOR 43 

through. I was sayin’, they drew lots, an’—the 
lot fell to the lady.” 

“ They was goin’ to eat the lady! ” exclaimed 
his comrade, in horror. 

“Yes, sir, that’s what they would ’a’ done. 
But her brother he said he’d take her place.” 

“ An’ then what happened? ” 

“ They don’t know no more after that. The 
writin’ stops there.” 

“ Say,” said the dog-fancier, disgusted, 
“ that’s no place to have the story stop. Get a 
fellow all strung up and then dump him off that 
way without knowin’ how it ended.” 

The man with the hose began to bind up a leak 
with a bit of tarpaulin. “ I ain’t made it up 
outa my head,” he said. “ I’m just tellin’ you 
what happened. An’ it seems to me the story 
did have an end, all right, ’cause there they were 
all lyin’ stretched out cold the way the hunter 
found ’em.” 

The listener shivered. “ Say, can’t you tell us 
a more cheerful yarn?” 

The story-teller shook his head. “ Mos’ 
Newfoundland an’ Labrador stories is like that, 
Bill,” he said. “ Grey, like the fog an’ the face 


44 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 
o’ the sea—Guess I’ll go an’ put on some more 
clothes. This wind sure does bite clear into the 
middle o’ your bones.” 

“ Yes,” said the other, “ an’ the sea’s gettin’ 
colder every minute. Say, Jim, I hope the 
watch’ll keep his eyes peeled to-night. I’d sure 
hate to run into any o’ those there bergs. Don’t 
like the looks o’ that one we seen just now. 
One o’ those’d be enough to send us all to Davy 
Jones’s locker in a jiffy.” 

For five days more they ran on, all the time 
through dense fog. Then—the grey mist lifted, 
and the lovely green of the land appeared. At 
least, it looked beautiful after so many days at 
sea. 

But what was that? Over the evergreens a 
tall plume of black smoke rose. 

“ The place is burnin’ up ! ” said Bill to Jim. 

“ I counted thirteen places where she’s on fire. 
What is that anyway? ” 

“ That’s St. John’s,” answered Bill, a little 
proud of his knowledge. “ Capital o’ New¬ 
foundland.” 

“ Where’re we gonna land, with this fire 
goin’ on this way? ” 


WESTWARD HO! FOR LABRADOR 45 

" Dunno,” said Bill. “ We’ll run in farther, 
V then we can see.” 

Grenfell was at the prow, looking at the burn¬ 
ing city. Some of the ships had burned down to 
the water, right at the wharves. Chimneys were 
standing up out of the ruins like broken, black-^ 
ened fingers pointing at the sky. 

People came running down through the smoke 
and the flames. 

“ Got anything to eat? ” they cried. 

“ Not much! ” shouted back Grenfell. “ But 
what we’ve got you’re welcome to! ” 

“ Is there a doctor on board? ” was the next 
hail. 

“ I’m a doctor,” called Grenfell. 

“ Glory be! ” came the answer. “ There’ll be 
plenty for you to do ashore, Doctor! ” 

So instead of rest and comfort after the long 
sea-voyage Grenfell and those with him had to 
peel off their coats and plunge right in and help 
with both hands right and left. 

It was with heavy hearts a few days later that 
they said good-by and started north for Labra¬ 
dor where there were people who needed them 
even more than the burned-out folk of St. John’s. 


46 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

They ran across the Straits of Belle Isle, 
through which the River St. Lawrence flows to 
the Atlantic, and the sun flashed on a hundred 
icebergs at once, in a glorious procession. 

The seabirds were fighting and crying over 
the fish. 

The whales were leaping clean out of the sea, 
as if they were playing a game and having lots 
of fun. 

Grenfell laughed aloud as he watched them. 
“ I say, boys,” he said to the sailors, “ don’t you 
wish you could jump out of the water like 
that? ” 

“ I wish we had all the oil there is in all them 
whales!” said Bill, who had a very practical 
mind. 

Into the very middle of the fishing-fleet they 
sailed. 

Flags of welcome were run up to the mast¬ 
heads of the schooners. There were about 30,- 
000 Newfoundlanders in the whole fleet, on 
more than 100 schooners—and Grenfell’s boat 
was a little bit of a thing compared with most 
of them. 

But they all knew that the small boat had 


WESTWARD HO! FOR LABRADOR 47 
sailed clear across the sea to help them, and they 
all wanted to show how glad and grateful they 
were that a real doctor had come to their help. 

Pretty soon the little boats coming from the 
schooners were flocking round them like ants 
about a sugar-bowl. 

One man came after all the rest had gone. 

His boat was little better than a bunch of 
boards with a dab of tar here and there. 

For a long time the rower sat still, looking 
up at Dr. Grenfell, who leaned over the rail 
gazing down at him. 

By and by the fisherman broke the silence. 

“ Be you a real doctor, sir? ” 

“ That’s what I call myself,” answered Gren¬ 
fell. 

“ What’s your name? ” 

11 Grenfell.” 

“ Well, Dr. Greenpeel, us hasn’t got no 
money, but-” 

He stopped. 

“ I don’t care about the money,” Grenfell 
answered. “ What’s the trouble? ” 

“ There’s a man ashore wonderful sick, 
Doctor, if so be you’d come ’n’ see him.” 


48 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

“ Sure I’ll come! ” 

Dr. Grenfell was over the rail and in the 
fisherman’s poor tub in a jiffy. 

He was taken to a mean sod hut. 

The only furniture was a stove that looked like 
a big tin can burst open. 

The floor was of stones from the beach: the 
walls were mud. Six children were sitting in a 
corner, about as dirty as the mud walls, and just 
as quiet. 

A woman in rags was giving spoonfuls of 
water to a man who lay on the one bed coughing 
till it seemed the poor fellow must cough him¬ 
self to pieces. 

“Well, well,” said the Doctor. “We must 
fix him up.” He didn’t tell the woman that her 
husband had both consumption and pneumonia. 

He left medicine and food and told the poor 
wife what to do. Then he had to go on to 
others who needed him. 

It was two months before he could come back 
to this lonely spot—and then he found outside 
the hut a grave, covered with snow. 

On that first voyage Dr. Grenfell had to 
see nine hundred people who needed his help! 


WESTWARD HO! FOR LABRADOR 49 


One was an Eskimo, who had fired off a can¬ 
non to celebrate when the Moravian mission 
boat came in. 

No wonder he felt like celebrating—for the 
boat only came once a year! 

The gun blew up—and took off both of the 
poor fellow’s arms. 

He lay on his back for two weeks, the stumps 
covered with wet filthy rags. When Grenfell 
finally got there, it was too late to save him. 

They do queer things on that coast when they 
have no doctor handy to tell them what to do. 

For instance, a baby had pneumonia, and the 
mother dosed it with reindeer-moss and salt 
water, because that was all she had to give it! 

A woman was done up in brown paper so the 
bugs wouldn’t bite her. 

One man set up in business as a doctor and 
gave his patients a bull’s heart dried and pow¬ 
dered for medicine. 

Another man said he knew how to get rid of 
boils. “ I cut my nails on a Monday,” was his 
cure. 

They would take pulley-blocks and boil them 
in water and then drink the water. 


50 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

To tell how the wind blew they would hang 
the head of a fox or wolf or a seal from the 
rafters and watch the way it swung. A wolf or 
fox would face the wind, they said, but a seal’s 
head would turn away from it. 

For rheumatism you must wear a haddock’s 
fin-bone. 

Green worsted tied round your wrist was a 
sure cure for hemorrhage. 

If you had trouble with your eyes, you ought 
to get somebody to blow sugar into them. 

Little sacks full of prayers tied round your 
neck were a great help in any sort of sick¬ 
ness. 

A father tied a split herring round his boy’s 
throat for diphtheria. 

This shows what Dr. Grenfell was up 
against when he came to Labrador with his 
“ scientific notions ” about what ought to be done 
for sick people. 

One day, just as the Doctor had cast anchor 
between two little islands far out at sea, a little 
rowboat came to him from a small Welsh 
brigantine. 

“Doctor!” a man called out. “Would ye 


WESTWARD IIO! FOR LABRADOR 51 

please be so good an’ come ashore an’ see a poor 
girl? She’s dyinM” 

The Doctor didn’t need to be urged. He went 
ashore in the rowboat. In a rough bunk in a 
dark corner of a fishing-hut lay a very pretty 
girl, about eighteen years old. 

All summer long, poor thing—the only 
woman among many men—she had been cook¬ 
ing, mending, helping to clean and dry and salt 
the fish. 

Nobody asked if she was tired. Nobody 
asked if she wanted a vacation. She had done 
her faithful best—and now, worn out, she was 
cast aside like an old shoe. 

One look told the Doctor that she was dying. 

The captain of the brigantine, who was 
tender-hearted, and really cared for her, had 
decided that this was a case of typhoid. He told 
the fishermen to keep away—for the germs 
might get into the fish they were preparing to 
send off to market. 

So he had been the nurse. But all he could 
do was feed her. For two weeks—during part 
of which time she was unconscious—she had not 
been washed, and her bed had not been changed. 


52 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

Outside it was a dark night, and the fog hung 
low and menacing over the water. The big trap- 
boat with six men, and the skipper’s sons among 
them, had been missing since morning. 

The skipper had stayed home to take care of 
the poor little servant girl. While he sat beside 
her wretched bunk, his mind was divided be¬ 
tween her plight and his anxiety for the six men 
out there in the angry, ugly sea. 

“ I wonder where the b’ys are now,” he mut¬ 
tered. 

Then he would go to the door and peer out 
under his hand into the night. Nothing there 
but the dark and the mystery. 

“ ’Twas time they were back,—long, long 
ago!” he would say. “ ’Tis a wonderful bad 
night for the fog. I doubt they’ll find their way 
in. I should ’a’ gone out wi’ them. But no, 
she needed me! Poor girl! The Lord, He 
gives, an’ the Lord He takes away: blessed be the 
name o’ the Lord! ” 

Wiping his eyes on his rough sleeve, the cap¬ 
tain came back and helped the Doctor put clean 
linen on the bed and wash the poor girl’s grimy 
face. 


WESTWARD HO! FOR LABRADOR 53 

She was unconscious now: her life was ebbing 
fast. 

The captain went to the door again and again. 
Outside there was no sound but the low moan¬ 
ing of the night wind in the blackness. The 
fishermen, afraid of what the mysterious disease 
might do for them, were keeping their dis¬ 
tance. 

Suddenly as the captain glanced on the pale 
face of the girl, he gasped. 

“ She’s dead, Doctor, she’s dead!” The 
Doctor felt her heart. It was true. The spirit 
of the brave little maid had gone at last beyond 
the beck and call of men. 

It was midnight, and over the dim and smok¬ 
ing lamp the captain and the Doctor decided 
that the best thing to do was to make a bonfire 
of the girl’s few poor effects. 

So they took her meagre clothes and miser¬ 
able bedding out on the cliffs, piled them, soaked 
them in oil, and set them afire. 

The flames leapt high and made a beacon to 
be seen afar. 

Out there on the black face of the deep six 
hopeless, helpless men in a trap-boat, groping 


54 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 
their way blindly, saw the flames and took heart 
again. 

“See!” they cried to one another. “Look 
there! Up yonder on the cliffs! They’re givin’ 
us a light to steer by! ” 

They drove their oars into the yeasty waves 
again with strength renewed. Little did they 
know what it was that had made the light for 
them. 

When at last they dragged their boat ashore 
and hobbled to the hut, they saw the body of the 
girl, the lamp, and the captain and the Doctor 
making the body ready for the burial. They 
entered the hut, and were told what had hap¬ 
pened. 

“ B’ys,” said the foremost, “ she’s dead. 
Mary’s dead. The last thing she did was to give 
us a light to show us the way home. Poor girl, 
poor little girl! ” 

Once when a small steamer Grenfell was 
using had broken down, he found shelter in a 
one room hut ashore. 

The inmates had few clothes, almost no food, 
and neither tools nor proper furniture. There 
was nothing between them and the Aurora 


WESTWARD HO! FOR LABRADOR 55 

Borealis but ruin and famine. There were eight 
children. Five slept in one bed: three slept 
with the parents in the other bed: Grenfell in 
his sleeping-bag lay on the floor, his nose at the 
crack of the door to get fresh air. 

They all suffered from the cold, for there was 
not a blanket in the house. 

“ Where’s the blanket I sent you last year? ” 
asked the Doctor. 

The mother raised her skinny arm and pointed 
about the room to patched trousers and coats. 

Then she said, with a good deal of feeling, 
“ If youse had five lads all trying to get under 
one covering to onct, Doctor, you’d soon know 
what would happen to that blanket.” 

First thing in the morning, Grenfell boiled 
some cocoa, and took the two elder boys out for 
a seal-hunt. 

To a boy on the Labrador, a seal-hunt is the 
biggest kind of a lark. If it is winter, the seals 
may be caught near their blow-holes in the ice, 
and hit over the head with a stick called a gaff. 
In summer, they must be shot from a boat. 

One of the boys, when he thought the Doctor 
was not looking, emptied the steaming fragrant 


56 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 
cocoa from his mug and filled it with water in¬ 
stead. 

“ I ’lows I’se not accustomed to no sweetness,” 
was his excuse. 

The boys proved the jolliest of comrades and 
the best of huntsmen. In the nipping wind they 
rowed the boat where the Doctor told them, so 
that he could shoot. He had on a lined leather 
coat: but they had only torn cotton shirts and 
thin jackets to face the raw dampness of the early 
morning. 

But they laughed and joked and carried on, 
and didn’t care whether any seals were found or 
not. The hunt was unsuccessful. When Gren¬ 
fell left, however, he promised the boys they 
should have a dozen fox traps for the winter. 

Their eyes shone, and they grasped his hands. 
It was to them a princely, a magnificent gift. 

“ Doctor, Doctor!” was all they could say. 
“ What can we do for ye? ” 

“ Go out and catch foxes,” said the Doctor. 
“ We’ll see what we can get for them when you 
catch them.” 

Next summer the Doctor, true to his word as 
always, came back and found the little house as 


WESTWARD HO! FOR LABRADOR 57 

bare and bleak as before. But the boys met him 
with the same old broad grins on their faces, 
cheerful as the sunrise. 

“See, Doctor!” They flourished the pre¬ 
cious pelt of a silver fox. “ We kep’ it for 
youse, though us hadn’t ne’er a bit in the house. 
We knowed you’d do better’n we with he.” 

So Dr. Grenfell said he would try. He 
went to an island where Captain Will Bartlett 
made his home. This Bartlett was the father of 
“ Bob ” Bartlett who captained Peary’s ship, the 
Roosevelt, on the successful trip to the North 
Pole in 1909. Father Bartlett was famous 
round about for sealing and fishing, and he had 
not only a thriving summer trade of his own but 
a big heart for unfortunate neighbors. 

“ Do your best for me, Captain Will,” said 
Grenfell, handing over the skin. 

“That I will, Doctor!” answered Bartlett 
heartily. “ Drop in on your way back.” 

The Doctor did so—and he found Captain 
Will had put aside a full boat-load of provisions 
of all sorts for the starving family. 

Happy in the thought of the good it would do, 
Grenfell started back for the promontory at Big 


58 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

River where he had every reason to expect the 
family would be watching for him anxiously. 

As he neared the land—he saw no one moving. 
The boat was beached, and the Doctor went up 
to the house. 

The door was locked: there was no one within 
hail, though he shouted again and again. 

Grenfell knew this absence must mean that the 
whole family had gone to the distant islands for 
the fishing. 

So he broke in the door, piled the things he 
had brought inside, and wrote a letter. 

“ This is the price of your pelt. Put all the 
fur you catch next winter in a barrel and sit on 
the top of the barrel till the spring, when we are 
coming back again. Be sure not to let anybody 
get it from you at a low price.” 

During the winter, accordingly, the family 
put by the furs that they got from the animals 
which the boys caught in their traps. In the 
summer, Grenfell took the pelts to the nearest 
cash buyer, and with the money supplies were 
bought in St. John’s. The poor fisherman found 
that he had more food than he needed, so he sold 
the surplus, at a fair profit, to his neighbor. 


WESTWARD HO! FOR LABRADOR 59 

Year after year this was kept up, and when 
the father died he left Grenfell $200 in cash to 
be divided among the children. 

Thus the Doctor had the satisfaction of bring¬ 
ing this family up from a blanketless poverty, on 
the flat brink of starvation, to something like 
wealth in a land where a man with fire-wood, 
lettuce, dogs, codfish in the sea and a few dollars 
in hand thinks he is well off and piously thanks 
Heaven for his good fortune. 

As for the sealers—the men who stand a 
chance to make anything are those who buy what 
they call a ticket to the ice—that is to say, a share 
in a sealing venture—and go out from St. John’s 
in the steamers or sailing vessels at the beginning 
of March. The ship has sheathed wooden sides 
a foot and a half thick, and is bound with iron 
at the bow, to aid in battering the ice-pack. For 
the auxiliary engine 500 tons of coal are carried: 
and a crew of 300 men will use 500 gallons of 
water in a day—but the easy way to get more is 
to boil the ice, so nobody worries about that. 
Tragedies of the sealing fleet are without 
number. The worst have happened when bliz¬ 
zards caught the men out on the ice-floes far 


60 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 
from their ship. One captain saved all his men 
by having them pile up their gaffs and lie down 
on them for cat-naps. Then he would make 
them get up and dance like mad for five minutes, 
while he crooned “ chin-music ” to them. Thus 
he saved them from freezing to death. In that 
storm the Greenland of Harbor Grace lost 52 of 
her 100 men. Grenfell tells of sixteen fisher¬ 
men on Trinity Bay who, without fire or food or 
sufficient clothing, after thirty-six hours of suf¬ 
fering dragged their boats ten miles across the 
ice to the land. 

The Southern Cross in 1914 was coming 
from the banks with 174 men and a full load. 
She was lost with all hands, and her fate re¬ 
mains a mystery. A life-belt picked up on the 
Irish coast was all that was ever recovered from 
the doomed ship. In the same year the men of 
the Newfoundland were caught out on the ice 
and unable to get back to the ship. Of the com¬ 
pany seventy-seven lost their lives and forty-two 
were crippled. 

Two boys and two men were tending seal nets 
when a “ divey ” or snowstorm blew them help¬ 
lessly to sea. They crashed on an island, but ere 


WESTWARD HO! FOR LABRADOR 61 

they could land they were blown off again. 
During the night and the morning that followed, 
both men and one of the boys died. The other 
boy dressed himself in the clothes of the three 
who died, and kept their bodies in the boat. 

They had caught an old harp seal, and he ate 
its flesh and drank its blood. On the third day 
he gaffed another seal as it floated past on a cake 
of ice. Then he had another drink of warm 
blood. Two days later he killed another seal. 

By that time he began “ seeing things.” He 
thought he saw a ship in the distance. He 
clambered out of his boat and hobbled five miles 
over the ice, only to find that it was not a sail that 
he had seen, but a hummock of ice. The only 
thing to do was to make his way back over the 
weary miles to the boat he left. 

On the seventh day, with despair gnawing at 
his heart, one of the sealing fleet, the Flora, came 
in sight. 

It was dark, and this was his one chance of 
rescue. He shouted with all his might. But 
the boat immediately backed as if to leave him. 

He screamed again, and the merciful wind 
caught up his voice and carried it to the vessel. 


62 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

He shouted once more: “ For God’s sake, 
don’t leave me with my dead father here! ” 

Then the ship hove to, and when the brave 
boy was lifted aboard the watch explained to 
him: 

“ Ye see, lad, the first time we heard ye call 
we thought it was sperrits.” 

They picked up the boat as well as the boy, 
and finally put them aboard another vessel that 
was going toward the lad’s fatherless home. 

Grenfell went out with the sealing fleet and 
took his full share of all the hardships of the 
mariners who from boyhood look on sealing as 
life’s great adventure. While they are still tiny 
tads, the boys of St. John’s and the outposts 
practise leaping across rain-barrels and mud- 
puddles. They are looking forward to the time 
when a running jump from one cake of ice to 
another may be the means of saving their lives. 
To “copy” is to play the game of follow-my- 
leader: and so the boys use the phrase “ a good 
big copy from pan to pan ” when they mean it is 
a long leap between. 

There is uncontrollable excitement aboard a 
sealer when the prize is in sight at last. Per- 


WESTWARD HO! FOR LABRADOR 63 

haps the ship has been buffeting the ice for many 
weary days, bucking the floes and backing away 
again with the lookout in the crow’s nest scan¬ 
ning the horizon in vain with powerful spy¬ 
glasses. 

But at last the joyful cry is heard: “White¬ 
coats!” or “ Dere’m de whitey jackets!” In 
less time than it takes to tell the men swarm over 
the bulwarks with their gaffs and knives and are 
deployed among the seals. 

The “ whitecoats ” are the helpless young 
ones, mild and innocent as puppies, with great 
tears in their eyes and as pettable as woolly 
lambs if the sealers did not have to steel their 
hearts and think of their own young ones at 
home. Can you blame the man with the knife, 
any more than you blame the butcher who serves 
your household with lamb chops, if he goes to 
the red-handed slaughter with might and main? 
Those “ whitey jackets ” may spell to his family 
the difference between starvation and sufficiency 
if not plenty. He cannot afford to let sentiment 
interfere with his grim business. 

The young seals are gaffed without trouble: 
the old ones are shot. The adult males are 


64 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

called “dogs”—and a “dog” hood seal, 
brought to bay and standing up on his flippers 
like a bear, is an ugly customer. It needs two 
men to tackle him, and if they are not careful 
he will bite off an arm or a leg in a jiffy. Yet 
the “ dog ” takes to the water, if he can get 
there, without paying the slightest heed to what 
becomes of the mother seal or the young one. 
He is generally a poor defender of his own 
family. 

For the hood seal family consists of but the 
three. Father—the “dog” hood—blows a big 
skin bag over his head when he is attacked, and 
the blows of the gaff rain upon it harmlessly. 
So terrific is his bite, when he gets a chance at 
his assailant, that the Newfoundlanders say the 
carcass itself can bite after the head has been 
cut off. A mature “ dog ” seal weighs from 
600 to 900 pounds. 

Bucking the ice to get at the main herd is a 
big part of the battle. Sometimes the skipper 
shouts: “Bombs out!” Then the blasting 
powder is produced, and the cry comes: “Hot 
poker for the blasts! ” The fuse is then touched 
off with the red-hot implement. The bomb is 


WESTWARD HO! FOR LABRADOR 65 


thrust into an ice-crevice, whereupon all hands 
“ beat it ” as fast as ever they can—and a little 
bit faster. 

Then comes a deafening explosion that rocks 
the ship: and the ice rains on the deck in chunks, 
like bursting shells in an artillery bombardment. 

With all the watchfulness, and the desperate 
risks the skipper takes as he drives the vessel 
into the pack ice, there is an excellent chance of 
missing the main herd entirely. An “Aerial 
Observation Company,” started by a plucky 
Australian flyer at Botswood, was successful in 
showing the sealers of 1922 where to go, by drop¬ 
ping letters on or near the ships—but they could 
not make their way through the ice to the place 
indicated. During 1923 the fog was so dense 
that the sealing-season was almost a failure. 

On his first voyage to the sealing grounds 
Grenfell saw the seals like black dots by the 
thousands, all over the floes as far as the horizon. 
The ships butted and rammed their way into the 
thick of the herd, the men overjoyed at the pros¬ 
pect of plenty. As soon as the engines stopped 
they were over the side, booted and sweatered, in 
a jiffy. 


66 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 


There was plenty of work for Dr. Gren¬ 
fell. Many a man twisted his leg or his ankle 
as he slipped between the blocks of ice. Pres¬ 
ently there were thirty or forty at a time sur¬ 
rounding him begging him to put some liniment 
in their eyes to cure the snow-blindness due to 
the fierce glare of the sun upon the ice-fields. 

The Eskimos, not having glasses, use spectacles 
of wooden discs with narrow slits, and do not 
suffer so much—but very few of the sealers from 
“ the Old Rock,” as Newfoundland is called, 
think to provide themselves with smoked 
glasses. 

One day Grenfell was kept busy for a long 
time rubbing arms and legs and anointing smart¬ 
ing eyes. The men were nearly all scattered 
about on the ice, near and far, when he got 
through—so he thought he would drop over the 
side and watch them at their work. By this 
time it was late afternoon. 

Till now, a strong wind had been blowing, 
and this had kept the ice packed together. The 
wind died down and the bits of ice began to u run 
abroad ” as the sailors say. Grenfell and a 
dozen men with whom he found himself were 


WESTWARD HO! FOR LABRADOR 67 

far from the ship, and darkness was fast coming 
on. 

Of course they had no boat, and the only 
way they could get back to the ship was to float 
on one piece of ice to another. They had no 
oars with which to propel themselves—all they 
could do was to beat the water with the seal- 
gaffs. 

This was so slow a process that by and by they 
gave it up, and decided to wait for the ship to 
come and find them. The ship by this time was 
out of sight. 

It grew colder and colder after the red sun 
went down. They had a little sugar and oat¬ 
meal. This they mixed with snow and devoured. 
Then they took their “ seal bats ” and cut them 
up with their big knives. They dipped the 
pieces in the fat of the dead seals, and with these 
they made bonfires to let the ship know where 
they were. 

In the light of the occasional blaze of their 
beacon fires they played games to keep from 
freezing. “ Leap-frog ” and “ one old cat ” 
were the favorites. Men not accustomed to the 
toughening Northern life might have been 


68 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 
whimpering with the piercing cold and the fear 
of the sea’s anger by this time. Not so with 
these men. 

The night wore on—and suddenly out of the 
darkness they heard the welcome sound of the 
little steamer crunching her way through the 
ice-pack. 

The wrath of the skipper leaning over the bow 
was almost more terrible to face than any ice- 
storm would have been. 

Did he respect the Doctor of the Deep Sea 
Mission? He did not. His tongue-lashing in¬ 
cluded them all. 

“ It was the worst blowing-up I ever received 
since my father spanked me,” says Grenfell with 
a laugh, remembering that anxious night. 

Later, the skipper came to him. “ Doctor,” 
he said, “ the truth is I was that torn in my mind 
while ye were gone, and that relieved of worry 
when I came on ye in the ice-pack, that I do not 
know the words I may have used. If I was 
wicked or profane—the good God forgive me. 
It was my upside-down way of saying my grati¬ 
tude to God for His salvation.” 

The Doctor’s day’s work was not yet ended. 


WESTWARD HO! FOR LABRADOR 69 

He clambered down into the hold, a man ahead 
of him carrying a candle and matches. In his 
hand was a bottle of cocaine solution, for some of 
the men were suffering such agonies with the 
snow-blindness that they were all but out of their 
minds. They would moan and toss in frenzy, 
hardly knowing when the Doctor came to 
them. 

“ It hurts something wonderful! ” they would 
cry, brave men as they were. “ Can’t ye give 
me something to stop it? ’Twere better dead 
than this! ” 

It was hard to get down into the hold at all, 
for the ladders were gone, and as the vessel 
rocked the seals and the coal were sloshing about 
below-decks where the men lay sprawled among 
them. 

“ Is anybody here? ” the Doctor would call, as 
he poked into a dark angle. 

No answer. 

He would try again. “ Any one in here?” 
There might be a fitful wail from a far corner. 
Then the Doctor would have to clamber over 
and round the casks and throw aside potato 
sacks and boxes. Sometimes his patients, in a 


70 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 
sodden stupor, hidden away at the bottom of 
everything, could not be found at all. 

In these filthy, reeking holds, enduring all dis¬ 
comforts for the sake of perhaps a hundred dol¬ 
lars payable weeks hence, the men somehow re¬ 
covered from their ailments and throve and 
grew fat on pork and seal meat, fried with 
onions. Whenever the rats were especially 
noisy, the wise ones said it meant a gale: but 
sometimes the rats and the wise men were wrong. 
It was no place for a man with a weak stomach, 
that gallant little sealing-steamer! 

On Sunday the men religiously refused to go 
out on the ice, though the seals tantalizingly 
frolicked all about them. The seals seemed to 
know how the pious Newfoundlander observes 
the Lord’s Day. The animals stared at the ship 
and the ship stared back at them. Then in great 
glee the seals took to their perpetual water- 
sports, in which they are as adept as the penguins 
of the Antarctic. 

“ I have marveled greatly,” Grenfell says, 
u how it is possible for any hot-blooded creature 
to enjoy so immensely this terribly cold water as 
do these old seals. They paddle about, throw 


WESTWARD HO! FOR LABRADOR 71 


themselves on their backs, float and puff out their 
breasts, flapping their flippers like paws over 
their chests.” 

While they lay off Fogo Island, watching the 
seals, the great pans of ice, rising and falling 
with the heaving of the sea, beat on the stout 
sides of the Neptune as on a drum-head. Some¬ 
times to avoid an awful drubbing the Neptune 
would steam a little ahead, very much as a swim¬ 
mer dives into a breaker to cleave it before it 
combs over and carries him off his feet. Gren¬ 
fell himself, loving a bout with “ the bright eyes 
of danger,” left the ship and went out on the 
ice and tried to climb one of the bergs, stranded 
in the midst of the ice-pack. It was like a living 
thing striving to fight its way out—something 
like a polar bear surrounded by “ husky ” dogs 
worrying him and trying to pull him down. 

As a sky-scraper gives to the wind, the berg 
was rocked to and fro—eight feet or so with 
every wave that struck it. It fell on the pans 
like a great trip-hammer, backed away and came 
on again, the ice groaning as though it were a 
living creature in mortal agony. As pieces fell 
off into the sea the waves leapt up, the way 


72 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

wolves might leap about a running caribou. In 
such a battle of the ice with the ice, a man 
knows what a pigmy he is, measured against the 
mightiest natural forces. 

The Neptune escaped a ramming—but her 
neighbor, the Wolf, was not so lucky. The 
Wolf had rounded Fogo Island in an offshore 
wind that treacherously offered her a clear chan¬ 
nel close to the land. As soon as she got round, 
the north wind, as though a demon impelled it, 
brought the ice crashing back and pinned her 
fast. An immense floe of ice, massing in upon 
the doomed ship, piled higher and higher above 
the bulwarks. 

“ Get the boats onto the pans! ” Captain Kean 
shouted to his men. It is just what they have 
had to do on many an Arctic expedition when 
the ice has nipped them. 

They took their food and clothes—but Cap¬ 
tain Kean, the last to leave the ship, of course— 
saved nothing of his own except his life. And 
it was the closest possible call for him. Just 
after he jumped, the ice opened like the Red 
Sea parting for the hosts of Pharaoh. Down 
went the Wolf like a stone, and as she tossed and 


WESTWARD HO! FOR LABRADOR 73 

heaved and gurgled in her death-throes the ends 
of her spars caught on the edges of the ice and 
were broken off as if they were match-wood. 
The sea seems to dance above such a wreck with 
a personal, malicious vengeance. 

It was the old, sad story for the captain and 
his men. They would have to walk ashore, 
three hundred of them, over the miles of cruel 
ice. At home, their wives and children would 
be waiting and hoping for a grand success and 
a good time. Instead, after a forced and weary 
march of days,—going perhaps three hundred 
miles,—with much rowing and camping, father 
or brother would stagger in, his little pack of 
poor belongings on his sore shoulders, and throw 
it down, and say with a great sob: “ ’Tis all I’ve 
brought ye! ” 

It is a pitiful thing indeed for a man to have 
traveled hundreds of miles to board a ship, in 
the hope of a few dollars for the risk of his life, 
and then to have the sea swallow up his chance, 
and turn him loose to the ice and snow, a ruined 
man. When a captain loses his ship, whatever 
the reason, it is almost impossible for him to 
obtain a command again. 


HAULED BY THE HUSKIES 


THERE was great excitement at the little 
village of St. Anthony, on the far northern tip 
of Newfoundland. 

Tom Bradley was coming back from a seal- 
hunt, and his big dogs Jim and Jack were help¬ 
ing him drag a flipper seal big enough to give 
a slice of the fat to every man, woman and child 
in the place. 

Tom had a large family, and for nine days 
they had tasted nothing but a little roasted seal 
meat. 

Finally Tom took his gun down from the nails 
over the door. It was a single-barrel muzzle- 
loader, meant for a boy, but he was a good shot, 
and had often wandered out alone over the 
frozen sea and come back with a nice fat bird 
or even a seal to show for it. 

“ Where be you goin’, Tom? ” asked his anx¬ 
ious wife. 

“ Out yonder.” He jerked his thumb toward 
the wide white space of the ice-locked ocean. 



HAULED BY THE HUSKIES 75 

She ran to get his warm cap and mittens. 
“ When’ll you be back? ” 

“ I dunno. Not till I get a seal. Us has got 
to have somethin’ to eat, an’ have it soon.” 

She found an old flour-bag, and tied up in it 
a few crusts of bread. 

“ You’d ought to keep this here,” said Tom. 

“No, Tom. You can’t hunt without nothin’ 
to eat. We’ll manage somehow. We’ll bor¬ 
row.” 

“ Ain’t nobody to borrow from,” answered 
Tom. “ Ain’t nobody round here got nothin’. 
We uns is all starvin’. Hope Sandy Maule’s 
letter gits to that there Dr. Grenfell.” 

“Who’s Dr. Grenfell?” 

“ He’s a doctor cornin’ out here from England. 
He’s goin’ to help us.” 

“ Will he have anythin’ to eat? ” 

“ Yes—he’ll have suthin’. But he’s got lots o’ 
friends in England an’ America—an’ he can get 
’em to send things.” 

“ What’d Sandy Maule write? ” 

Tom was poking a bit of greasy cloth through 
the gun with a ramrod. Everything depended 
on the way that gun worked. He mustn t miss a 


76 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 
shot—there was no fun in that long, hard hunt 
on the ice that lay ahead of him. 

“ Sandy Maule wrote, 1 Please, Doctor, come 
and start a station here for us if you can. My 
family and I are starvin’. All the folks around 
us are starvin’ too. The fish hain’t struck in and 
bit like they should. We’re cuttin’ pieces outa 
the sides o’ our rubber boots an’ tyin’ ’em on for 
shoes.’ Things like that, Sandy writ to the 
Doctor.” 

Mrs. Bradley drew the sleeve of her thin, 
worn calico dress across her eyes. She was a 
brave woman, but her strength was nearly gone. 
She did not want her husband to see her cry. 

“ It’s all of it true,” she said. “ If I could 
only get a little fresh milk to give the baby! 
Might as well ask for the moon.” 

She did not speak bitterly. She would stay 
by her man and live for her children to the end. 

“ Well,” said Tom, trying to sound matter-of- 
fact, “ we’ll go out with the ole gun an’ see what 
we get.” Not one of the little boys was old 
enough to go, but the dogs Jim and Jack leaped 
up, wagging their tails and fawning upon their 
master. 


HAULED BY THE HUSKIES 77 

Tom had only part of a dog-team: when he 
or his neighbors made a long trip they borrowed 
from one another. What one had, they all had. 

As Tom stood looking at the dogs, he couldn’t 
help thinking: “ One of those dogs would keep 
the family alive for a while. But I sure would 
hate to kill one of the poor brutes. They’ve 
been the best friends we ever had.” His wife 
knew what he was thinking, though the dogs did 
not. 

Then he spoke. “ Gimme a kiss, wifey.” 
He smiled at her brightly. “ Cheer up. This 
little ole gun and me’ll bring ye enough to eat 
for a long time.” 

She kissed him, and off he trudged, the dogs 
leaping beside him and trying to lick his mit- 
tened hands. 

Away out yonder on the ice was a little black 
speck. He strained his eyes to see. 

“There’s one!” he muttered. “Now, how 
to get up near enough. If the dogs comes with 
me they’ll sure scare it away—it’ll go poppin’ 
into its old blow-hole afore I kin git it.” 

Jim and Jack were sitting on the bushy plu¬ 
mage of their tails, their bright eyes fixed on 


78 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 


their master, waiting for orders. They would 
have loved it had he told them to chase that black 
speck far out at sea. They would have gone on 
till they dropped, at his lightest word. 

“ No, boys, you wait here,” he said. “ You’re 
goin’ to help me haul it back—when I get it. 
But gettin’ it is somethin’ I gotta do all by my 
lonely. Now, you stay right here an’ wait for 
me. Don’t you dast to come no nearer!” He 
shook his finger at them solemnly. 

They seemed to understand. They curled up 
and lay down in the thin powdery snow-blanket. 

“Now then,” muttered Tom, “I gotta creep 
an’ creep an’ crawl an’ crawl till I get near, an’ 
then I gotta lie down an’ scrape along on my 
tummy same as if I was a seal myself. That’s 
what I gotta do.” 

Suiting the action to the word, he started on, 
watching all the time that little dark spot on 
which all depended. 

He could imagine the children waiting at 
home and asking their mother every little while: 
“ When’s Papa cornin’ back? Is he goin’ to 
bring us somepin’ to eat? ” 

“ I wonder if that there Grenfell man is ever 


HAULED BY THE HUSKIES 79 

goin’ to git this far north? ” Tom asked himself 
as he crept toward the seal. “ If us could only 
git a chance to sell our fish for better’n two cents 
a pound, after us gets ’em salted an’ dried! 
Them traders, they bleeds the life outa us. 
They say Grenfell when he comes is a-goin’ to 
fight them traders an’ put ’em outa business! ” 

The swift wind was throwing stinging bits of 
ice, sharp as needles, in his face. He drew his 
cap about his ears more closely and plodded on. 
The further he walked the further away the seal 
seemed to be. He was half crouching as he 
walked: he wished he might cover himself with 
a skin and crawl on all fours. But if he started 
to crawl now—he felt as though it would be a 
year before he could get near enough to shoot. 

“ Please, God ”—he spoke to God as naturally 
as to his family—“ bless this ole gun an’ make 
her shoot straight and he’p me knock that seal 
over, the first shot. For it don’t look like there’s 
goin’ to be more’n one shot, an’ if I don’t kill 
her there’s my whole family’s goin’ to starve and 
mebbe a whole lot o’ other people that’s a-look- 
in’ for what they think I’m a-goin’ to bring 
back.” 


80 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

Now it was time to flatten himself down on the 
ice and scrape along, like another seal. It was 
hard work—try it yourself, if you don’t think so! 
•—and it took lots of patience. 

Now he could see the seal raise its head and 
look about. He mustn’t give it a chance to ask 
questions of the wind, because the wind might 
say: “Look out, Mr. or Mrs. Seal! There’s a 
man creeping and creeping toward you with a 
gun, and in a minute that man is going to shoot, 
and you’ll be sorry you hung around here and 
didn’t dive through the ice the very first second 
your nose told you you’d better! ” 

He raised his gun, and prayed again—this 
time a very short prayer: “O Lord, bless this 
gun!” And he fired. 

The black spot had not vanished. It was 
motionless. “ Did I hit him? ” Tom asked 
himself. “ Better try another shot an’ make 
sure.” 

He was a long time sighting—and he im¬ 
agined the spot moved a little as he did so. 

Then he fired again. 

There it was still. Now he dared to believe 
he had hit the seal. Dragging the gun he 


HAULED BY THE HUSKIES 81 

crawled nearer and nearer. Still the seal did 
not move. 

Now he could see the whole animal clearly. 

The sight was joyful. 

“ Glory be!” he shouted. Then he jumped 
up and capered about madly on the ice. It was 
a nice, fat, luscious, flipper seal and dead as a 
door-nail. Enough for a banquet for all of the 
tiny village of St. Anthony. And if Dr. Gren¬ 
fell should be there when he and the dogs got 
back with it, the Doctor should have the largest, 
tenderest, juiciest steak of all. 

The wind was setting toward the dogs. He 
could barely see them there, far, far behind him 
—making a black spot where they slept, exactly 
as though they were another seal. 

So he put two fingers to his lips and blew a 
long, shrill blast. 

It was the signal for which they had been 
waiting. On they came like two wild young 
race-horses, each eager to be first to greet their 
master. 

They must have known well enough that he 
had killed the seal. They had hunted with him 
so often that if they had been human the man 


82 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

and the dogs could hardly have spoken to each 
other and understood better. 

“ Good old Jim! Good old Jack!” The 
dogs bounced round him like india rubber, mad 
with delight. 

“ Look what we gotta take back! Ain’t that 
somethin’ to make the old lady’s eyes pop outa 
her head? First big seal’s been caught off here 
for months! Enough to save the whole village 
from starvation. An’ you dogs is to have some 
of it too, all o’ you. Here’s to begin with! ” 

He drew his clasp-knife and snicker-snacked 
two good-sized bits from the tail of the fallen 
monarch. He threw the meat to the dogs, who 
had it down in a gulp and a swallow and then 
stood with their ears up, like the Jack-in-the- 
pulpit, to know if there would be more. 

“No, boys, that’s enough to start back on!” 
He produced straps and ropes from the bread- 
bag and rigged up a harness so that the dogs 
might haul the seal, giving himself the end of a 
rope, to pull more than his share of the heavy 
carcass. 

“Wisht we could git a coupla polar bears 
too! ” he laughed. “ But I don’t know how we 


83 


HAULED BY THE HUSKIES 

could pull to the shore any more’n what we got 
here. Well, when we’ve got this et we’ll be 
cornin’ back fer more, won’t we, boys?” 

And the dogs, tugging and wagging as they 
plodded shoreward, seemed to agree. 

In spite of the weight of the seal, the trip back 
did not seem nearly so long. For you know how 
it is—when your heart is light any burden you 
carry doesn’t count for nearly so much. 

Tom Bradley in spite of pulling so hard was 
singing to himself like a kettle on a stove. And 
the dogs, too, would have spared breath to bark 
joyously, if huskies ever barked. But no well- 
bred husky makes remarks of that sort. 

Tom stopped to rest, and sat on an ice-hum¬ 
mock, the dogs with their heads against his knee, 
their tongues lolling out. 

“ ’Member that time we chased the ole bear? ” 
he laughed. “ That was the time I couldn’t do 
nothing with you! You was young dogs then, 
an’ you got so excited you wouldn’t listen to 
nothin’! 

“ You just went a-racin’ an’ a-teafin’ on from 
the time you seen ’im. O’ course, as a driver 
don’t have no reins, an’ we only got a whip, we 


84 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

can’t pull you up if you really wanta go. We 
can just holler ‘ left ’ an’ ‘ right ’ an’ ‘ stop ’ an’ 
1 go ahead.’ But my oh my! We sure did stack 
up against trouble that day. 

“ You an’ the rest o’ the team, you waded right 
into that bear before I’d got you cut loose from 
the traces. The air was full o’ bear-meat an’ 
dog-fur flyin’. Guess the bear didn’t know no 
difference between you an’ wolves. There’s 
many a man has made the same mistake. 

“ There was old Mr. Bear standin’ up on his 
hind legs battin’ away like he was wound up, 
handin’ out punishment like it was a boxin’ 
match, and you fellows hollerin’ bloody murder. 

“You done more’n wolves would ’a’ done. 
Wolves wouldn’t ’a’ tackled a bear that way— 
unless it was a great big crowd o’ wolves an’ one 
lone, lorn, small bear. 

“ He was a buster, he was, an’ there was only 
six o’ you. But you stood right up-ta him all 
right! You remember, don’t you? ” 

Jim and Jack flopped their tails on the ice as 
if to say yes. Their mouths were wide open— 
it looked as if they were laughing in delight to 
be reminded of the battle. 


HAULED BY THE HUSKIES 85 

“ Say, you dogs certainly are the willin’, hard- 
workin’ fellers when you’re fed up right. I be¬ 
lieve you’d rather haul a sled than eat. You 
rascals! ’Member the time you et my gloves 
just as I was goin’ to start? I had to larrup outa 
you that trick you had when you was young o’ 
gobblin’ your own harness when you wasn’t 
watched. I sure do hate to hit you. One o’ 
these whips ’ll bite a hole in a door twenty feet 
off: I’ve seen ole Pop Rinker drive a nail in a 
board with one. 

“ When we get back, if that ther Dr. Gren¬ 
fell has come we’ll get some other dogs an’ take 
him out for a ride. He’ll have to have a team 
o’ dogs. Can’t get along in this country without 
you dogs—not till they have reindeer. Heaven 
knows, the Doctor’ll have miles and miles o’ 
country to cover, to get round to all the people 
hereabouts that needs him. Ain’t it a great an’ 
mighty blessin’ this country’s now a-goin’ to have 
a doctor all our own, all our very own? ” 

When they got back to the hamlet with their 
seal, there was a jollification. 

Tom Bradley could have been Mayor, or 
King, or anything he wanted. 


86 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

There was plenty of one thing in that place— 
and that was fire-wood, from the spruces and firs 
alongshore. 

So they built a monstrous pyramid, big enough 
to cook twenty seals, and round the community 
bonfire they collected, dogs and all, for a feast. 
The children shouted in glee and clapped their 
hands. The mothers were happier for them¬ 
selves than for their babies. And their joy was 
the greater because word had come that Dr. 
Grenfell was finding his way in the little 
steamer, the Julia Sheridan, through a channel 
behind the islands and was likely to be in their 
midst at any hour of any day. 

Next day, the Doctor came. Such hand¬ 
shaking and back-slapping and outcries of honest 
pleasure as greeted him! And from the very 
first minute there were anxious appeals for his 
aid. 

“ Doctor, would ye please come to see my old 
woman? ” 

“ What’s the matter with her? ” 

“ Oh, Doctor, she does be took wonderful bad. 
Sometimes the wind rises an’ it goes all up an’ 
down an’ it settles in her teeth an’ the pains 


HAULED BY THE HUSKIES 87 

shoots her in the stummick an’ we has to take 
hold of her arms an’ pull ’em out and she howls 
like a dog an’ we dunno what’s the matter. 
Would you please come an’ see? She’s askin’ us 
to kill her she’s in such punishment, but us didn’t 
think us’d ought to do it without askin’ you. 
Would you please come ’n’ see? ” 

In that first winter Grenfell was u at home ” 
three Sundays only, and he had to cover fifteen 
hundred miles behind the dogs. Sometimes 
they were heart-breaking, bone-racking miles. 
Sometimes they were as smooth and easy as a 
skating-rink. But not very often. 

One day he had a run of seventy miles to make 
across the frozen country. 

The path was not broken out—it wasn’t even 
cut and blazed. 

Just once had the leading dog made the 
journey. 

But because he had made it once—they left it 
all to him to choose the way to go. 

Straight on the good dog went, never stopping 
to turn round and look in the face of the driver, 
the way dogs will. 

The way—such as it was—took them over 


88 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

wide lakes, and through thick woods deep-hung 
with snow. 

“Halt!” called Grenfell. The driver gave 
the command to the dogs. They stopped and 
rested while the men explored. 

Sure enough, the leading dog was right. A 
climb to the top of a high tree showed the 
“ leads ” and proved to the men that they were 
traveling in the right direction: and the compass 
said so too. 

Again and again they stopped—and every 
time it proved that the dog was right. 

On journey after journey of this kind, round 
about St. Anthony on that far northern penin¬ 
sula of Newfoundland, Grenfell and the dogs he 
drove got to know and love one another better. 

Grenfell has done seventy-five miles in a day 
easily: but how far one goes depends on the 
state of the ice and snow and the roughness of 
the trail: sometimes five miles a day is as much 
as the dogs, pulling their very hearts out, are 
able to cover. Six miles an hour is an average 
rate of speed when it is “ good going.” Once 
the Doctor made twenty-one miles in a little 
more than two hours, over level ice. 


89 


HAULED BY THE HUSKIES 

The building of the sled, or komatik, is a most 
important matter. The Doctor prefers one 
eleven feet long, of black spruce, with runners 
an inch thick, covered with spring steel. With 
such a sled, and a good team of dogs attached 
with proper traces, travel on firm and level snow 
is an exhilarating experience. But a thousand 
and one things may go wrong, the dogs when 
not running are forever picking bloody quarrels, 
and continual vigilance is the price of a swift, 
smooth passage. 

A member of Grenfell’s staff had crossed a 
neck of land between two bays, and was “ twenty 
miles from anywhere,” when his dogs struck the 
fresh trail of deer. 

At such times the dogs are likely to take leave 
of all their senses save the instinct of the chase. 
These plucky beasts were no exception to the 
rule. 

As they were short of food, the two teams were 
hitched to one sled, and the other sled, laden, 
was left in charge of a boy, while the men gave 
chase to the caribou. Like Casabianca on the 
burning deck, the boy had been told not to stir 
from that chilly, lonesome spot. 


90 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

But just as the men got under way, a terrible 
snowstorm sprang up from nowhere, and so 
enveloped and bewildered the hunters that for 
two days they wandered, till they lost all hope. 

Then, by great good luck, starving and worn 
out, they came to a little house many long and 
weary miles from where the boy was left with 
the komatiks. 

They sent a relief team back to find him. 
There he was, standing by the sleds like a good, 
true soldier, just where they told him to remain. 
He was bound to be faithful unto death, even 
though he should freeze stiff for his obedience 
to orders. 

Another time, the team was halted in a wood 
at nightfall, and Grenfell and his comrades 
started to walk on snowshoes to the village six 
miles distant. 

They lost their way, and found themselves by 
nightfall at the foot of steep cliffs which they 
could not get round, though the village was 
hardly more than a mile away and its lights 
twinkled them a warm yellow welcome like 
friendly eyes. 

The only thing to do was to fight their way 






HAULED BY THE HUSKIES 91 

up and over the rocks. As they came to the top, 
they found two tired men who knew the way, but 
were so weary they had made up their minds to 
flop down in the snow for the night. 

But Grenfell started a fire, and served out 
some bits of sweet cake he carried: so that 
presently they took heart to go on. If they had 
not done so, they might all have frozen to death 
in the snow, for the night was bitterly cold and 
they were perspiring from their hard work, so 
that their clothes were turning as stiff as suits of 
armor with the ice. As it was, the whole party 
reached the village safely, and came back next 
day to find the dogs and the sleds and bring them 
in. 

A lumber mill was started on a bay sixty miles 
below St. Anthony, and a boiler weighing three 
tons was landed and set in place with the whole 
neighborhood helping. After Christmas Gren¬ 
fell decided to make the run thither with the 
dogs from St. Anthony. 

There was no trail. Most of the way the 
journey was through virgin forest. There were 
windfalls , and stumps and bushes with pointed 
rocks amid the snow—offering no end of pitfalls 


92 KNIGHT-ERRANT OE THE NORTH 

where a man might break his ankle and lie 
groaning and helpless as a wounded caribou till 
he died. 

Nobody they could find had ever made the 
trip. But they had to know without delay how 
the boiler worked and how the mill was going. 
So oh they started, gay as a circus parade, telling 
themselves they would do the distance in two 
days. 

Not so. At the end of two days they were 
still wrangling with mean little scrub bushes, 
fallen rotten logs and the pointed rocks treach¬ 
erously sheeted with ice and snow. 

If they struggled to the top of a snow-laden 
spruce for an outlook, all they saw was more of 
the same old thing—a scowling landscape of 
white-clad woods and lonesome ponds. The 
compass always seemed to lead them straight 
into the thick of the worst places. 

They took the wrong turning to get round a 
big hill, and found a river which they thought 
would lead them to the head of the bay where 
the mill stood. 

But the river was a raging torrent, which 
leapt among the rocks, made rapids and falls, 



HAULED BY THE HUSKIES 


93 


and left gaping holes in the ice into which the 
dogs fell, snarling their traces and their tempers 
and many times risking a broken leg. 

Still the brave little beasts of burden strained 
and tugged forward, encouraged by the shouts 
of the men. 

They couldn’t get away from the river, for 
the banks were too steep. By and by they 
reached a ravine where the water boiled and 
churned and raced along in its great rocky 
trough too rapidly to be frozen, even by the in¬ 
tense cold that prevailed. It seemed as if they 
must be halted here—but that is not the way 
with men of Newfoundland and the Labra¬ 
dor. 

The only thing to do was to chop a passage 
through the ice along the bank—like making a 
tow-path for a canal. 

After they had fought their way through the 
narrows, they yearned for sleep. So they built 
a fire, and felled tree-trunks twenty feet long 
into it, till they had a “ gorgeous blaze.” 
Then they dug holes in the snow, deep as bear’s 
dens, broke loose from their stiff, icy clothes, got 
into their sleeping bags, and slept the sleep of 


94 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 
the just till the golden sun warmed them with 
its morning blessing. 

The rest of the way gave them no trouble. 
They got a royal welcome from the hands at the 
mill. It was such a great event, in fact, that a 
holiday was declared, and all hands went “ rab¬ 
biting.” At the end of the day they built 
another mighty fire of logs, gathered round it 
with steaming cocoa and pork buns, and decided 
all over again that life was worth living and 
that moving a lumber-mill on an Arctic fore¬ 
shore is sheer fun, if you only think so. 

Not long after an experimental fox farm was 
begun. The farm part of it is not so hard as 
the foxes. All you need for the farm is a few 
poles and some wire netting. 

They picked up a dozen couples of foxes— 
red, white, cross, and one silver pair. A Har¬ 
vard professor describes moving day when foxes 
were being brought on the little steamer to St. 
Anthony. “ Dr. Grenfell at one time had fifteen 
little foxes aboard. . . . Some of these little 

animals had been brought aboard in blubber 
casks, and their coats were very sticky. After 
a few days they were very tame and played with 



Castles and Cathedrals ok Ice Afloat 






































































































I 

n vi 










HAULED BY THE HUSKIES 95 

the dogs; they were all over the deck, fell down 
the companionway, were always having their 
tails and feet stepped on, and yelping for pain, 
when not yelling for food. The long-suffering 
seaman who took care of them said, ‘ I been 
cleaned out dat fox box. It do be shockin’. I 
been in a courageous turmoil my time, but dis 
be de head smell ever I witnessed.’ ” 

Probably the fox farm suffered from too 
much publicity. A mother silver fox is one of 
the scariest of creatures, and is known to “kill 
her children to save their lives ” when a thunder¬ 
storm comes on, or visitors are alarming. Most 
fox farms are therefore in the depths of the 
woods: and the path to them is kept a dark secret 
by the owners. But the farmers at St. Anthony’s 
were green to the business, and they let the fish¬ 
ermen come in numbers to see the show, not 
realizing what the consequences would be. The 
red and the cross foxes seemed pleased to enter¬ 
tain guests; not so with the white foxes, and the 
precious silver foxes were the shyest of all. Not 
a pup lived to grow up. Many were born, but 
their parents killed them all. By and by, after 
a mortal plague broke out among the animals, 


96 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 
the farm was converted into a garden with a 
glass frame for seeding vegetables. 

But others, with more science at their com¬ 
mand, developed a profitable industry in 
Quebec, Labrador and in Prince Edward Island. 
In the year the war began a silver vixen and her 
brood were sold for ten thousand dollars. A 
wild fox, sold for twenty-five dollars, was resold 
for a thousand. There is money in the business, 
properly conducted. For those who want wild 
animals to have fair play, there is satisfaction in 
the thought that to get fox fur by way of breed¬ 
ing is infinitely more humane than to get it by 
way of the trap, whose cruel teeth may hold the 
animals through hours and days of suffering till 
the hunter comes. 


V 


SOME REAL SEA-DOGS 

“ Get out o’ there, youse! ” 

A big raw-boned fisherman with an oar in his 
hand came running up the stony beach at Hope- 
dale. 

The door of the little Moravian church 
was open. So were the windows. And so were 
the mouths of a pack of dogs who were yowling 
their heads off and trying to kill each other in¬ 
side the church. 

“ That’s just the way with them huskies!” 
panted Long Jim, as he stumbled up the slope. 
“ Can’t leave ’em be ten minutes without their 
gettin’ into mischief. ’Tis a nice place they 
picked out for a fight this time! I’ll soon have 
’em out o’ there! They’ll find out the house o’ 
God ain’t no dog-house.” 

Swinging his oar right and left he dashed into 
the church. 

Such a scene as met his eyes! 

The dogs had been tearing the hymn-books 


98 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

apart as if they were slabs of raw seal-meat. 
For the Eskimos had been handling the books 
with their fingers fresh from cleaning fish and 
cutting up blubber. So that to a dog’s nose each 
book smelt and tasted perfectly delicious. As 
fast as one dog closed his hungry jaws on a book, 
another dog, snarling and yowling, would try to 
snatch it from him. 

Over and over in the aisles and between the 
pews they rolled, snapping and tearing at one 
another. For the sake of meat they would do 
murder any day—and the fact that it was in a 
church on Sunday meant nothing to Long Jim’s 
idle, hungry pack. 

“ Go on, now! Git outa here! ” Long Jim 
laid about him vigorously with the oar. Sharp 
yelps resounded as he thwacked their heads and 
legs. One dog took a header into the baptismal 
font, which was full of stale water. 

Another tried to climb under the little cabinet 
organ. But there were two dogs there already, 
and one of them bit him in the chest. He 
backed away, slobbering and raging. 

Another dog hid under the communion table, 
but Long Jim found him and kicked him away 


SOME REAL SEA-DOGS 99 

with his soft furry boots that did no damage to 
dog ribs. 

The leaders of the pack, Jock and Sandy, 
soared out of the window at the right. Jock 
landed on his head in the kitchen garden where 
the precious cabbages were growing behind high 
wooden palings. Sandy was more fortunate, 
and fell squarely on his feet. Both dogs began 
to gobble the soft green stuff just visible above 
the ground. 

The other dogs came after them, biting and 
tearing at each other even while they were 
scrambling across the window-sill. 

“ Long Jim ” ran out at the door, and had to 
tear down a lot of the stakes before he could 
drive the dogs out of the garden. When at last 
they went, most of the young and precious cab¬ 
bages went with them. The garden looked like 
a mud-pile where children have been in a 
quarrel. 

“ Ain’t that a shame!” exclaimed Long Jim. 
“ Them poor Moravian brothers worked so hard 
to git that garden goinM I s’pose I gotta pay 
for them hymn-books an’ them cabbages. 
Where I’m a-gonna git the money t’ pay f’r it all, 


100 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

I’m blessed if I know! I guess I’ll have to see 
if I can git the money from Dr. Grenfell till I 
get paid for my fish.” 

Dr. Grenfell was in a cottage near by, visiting 
a patient. The sick man couldn’t stir from his 
bed. 

A puff of wind blew the door open, just as the 
hungry pack of dogs came rushing up. 

Instantly Jock and Sandy halted, and sniffed 
a mighty, soul-satisfying sniff. 

Such a nice, sweet smell of dinner as was 
blown on the breeze from the door! 

Their whiskers twitched and their mouths 
watered. 

Then it was just as if Jock and Sandy said to 
the other dogs: “Well, what about it, boys? 
Shall we have some more fun? Are you 
hungry? ” 

For the whole pack as though pulled by a 
string made a dash for the door and swept in on 
the Doctor and the sick man lying there. 

It was like an avalanche. Dr. Grenfell was 
swept off his legs, as if he had been bathing in 
the surf and a big wave rushed up and knocked 
him down. 


SOME REAL SEA-DOGS 101 

The boldest jumped up on the stove, where the 
stewpot was, that sent out such a delicious smell. 

He pried oil the cover, and then the pot rolled 
off the stove with a terrible clatter, and its steam¬ 
ing contents were dumped out on the floor. 

You could fairly hear those beasts screaming 
“That’s mine! Get out of there! That be¬ 
longs to me!” Just like greedy, quarrelsome 
boys that forgot their manners long ago, if they 
ever had any. 

They fought with added fury because—the 
hot stew burned their noses. They were in such 
a hurry they couldn’t wait for it to cool. They 
snuffled and scuffled, they bit and snarled and 
snorted, as they had done in the church with 
the hymn-books and then with the cabbages in 
the vegetable garden. 

One of the dogs thrust his head in the pot to 
get the last “ lickings ” and then he couldn’t 
shake it loose again. 

Round and round the room he banged and 
struggled, till the Doctor took pity on him and 
hauled it off his head. 

Meanwhile the house filled with steam as if 
it were on fire. 


102 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

The Eskimos came rushing from everywhere, 
with shouts in their own tongue that sounded 
almost like the cries of the dogs. 

They had long harpoon handles, and they 
pranced about the room, thwacking right and 
left. 

The Doctor was entirely forgotten. So was 
the sick man. The room was filled with steam, 
stew, dogs, harpoons, and blue language. 

At last the dogs were shoved out, and the door 
was slammed after them. 

“ How are you feeling? ” said the Doctor to 
his patient. 

“ B-b-better, Doctor. It was a funny show 
while it lasted. But I guess they ain’t much left 
o’ that there stew, is there? ” 

The Doctor laughed. “ No—our dinner is 
wrecked. A total loss!” 

The door opened slowly. Long Jim stood 
there in the doorway, fumbling his hat in his 
hand. “ Awful sorry about them dogs, Doctor,” 
he muttered. “ They just seem to ha’ gone clean 
crazy. They ain’t had nothin’ to eat for so long, 
you see. They’re good dogs when they ain’t 
hungry. Would you—would you lend me the 


SOME REAL SEA-DOGS 103 

money to pay for them hymn-books an’ cabbages 
an’ the stew till I can pay ye back? ” 

“Oh, that’s all right, Jim!” answered the 
Doctor. “ All told, the damage won’t amount 
to much. I’ll fix it up. Dogs will be dogs.” 

“Thank ye, Doctor,” said Jim, simply. But 
he was deeply grateful. He went out after his 
dogs to make them quit rampaging and take 
their places in the team. 

“ Doctor,” said the sick man, “ I minds me o’ 
the time one o’ them missionaries put a young 
dog in the team ahead o’ the old leader. Did 
ye ever hear tell o’ that? ” 

“ No. What happened? ” 

“Well, the big feller bit through the little 
feller’s traces an’ then must ’a’ said 1 you get out 
o’ here! ’ the way one dog knows how to talk to 
another. ’Cause the pup he began to run away, 
before they’d got the sled started at all.” 

“ And then what? ” asked Grenfell. 

“ Why—Mr. Young harnessed up the pup 
three times an’ each time the big dog he bites the 
pup loose an’ the pup runs away.” 

“ So what did Mr. Young do then? ” 

“ He give the big dog a whipping.” 


104 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

“ Did that do any good? ” 

“ Not the least little bit that ever was. It done 
a lot o’ harm. The old dog’s heart was bust. 
After that beatin’ he weren’t never the same 
again—he seemed to lose all taste for haulin’ a 
sled. He might as well have lain down an’ died 
in the traces, for all the use he was to the team 
after that. He wa’n’t no good for a leader any 
more. He wa’n’t no good for anything.” 

“ Do you use moccasins for your dogs? ” asked 
Grenfell. 

“ Sure us does. Makes ’em o’ sealskin. Us 
ties ’em round the dog’s ankles, cuttin’ three 
little holes for the claws.” 

“ I know,” said Grenfell. “ And the dog 
sometimes eats his own shoes, doesn’t he? ” 

“ Yes, sir. Till he gets to know what the 
shoes is for. I’ve had my dogs eat their own 
harness, many’s the time. Don’t seem as if dogs 
could ever git so tired they wouldn’t rather fight 
than sleep. I’d just like to know what’d wear 
out a husky so he wouldn’t be ready for a scrap. 
They likes fightin’ next to eatin’! ” 

“ I suppose you feed your dogs once a day? ” 
said the Doctor. 


SOME REAL SEA-DOGS 


105 


“Yes, Doctor. Only—they puts down the 
two fish I gives ’em in about one swallow for both 
fish. I can’t see that they gits much fun out o’ 
their supper.” 

Then the sick man began to laugh feebly. 
“ It ’minds me o’ the time I was out with the 
dogs in the deep snow. I was just goin’ to build 
me a snow hut for the night. There was a herd 
o’ caribou come by, goin’ so fast I couldn’t git 
my gun ready in time. 

“ But the dogs—they tears ’emselves loose 
from the traces, ’cause I hadn’t taken ’em out 
yet, an’ off they starts like the wind. They 
leaves behind one little mother dog. She was 
their leader—they was mostly from her litter. 

“ So off they goes like a shot from a gun, me 
runnin’ an’ yellin’ after ’em. 

“ Pretty soon they finds a deer a hunter had 
shot an’ must ha’ left behind ’cause he had so 
much he couldn’t carry any more. 

“ Anyway, they didn’t ask no questions. 
They eats an’ eats till you could see ’em bulgin’ 
way out like they had swallowed a football. 

“Well sir, would you believe it? All those 
dogs wa’n’t such pigs. There was one hadn’t 


106 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 
forgot the poor little ole mother dog at home 
that was all tied up so she couldn’t go with ’em. 
The biggest dog, he brought back a whole hunk 
out o’ the leg o’ that deer, an’ he laid it down, 
within her reach, where she could grab it up an’ 
give a gnaw to it when she felt like it.” 

“ That reminds me,” said Grenfell. “ A set¬ 
tler and his wife, in a lonely place, got the ‘ flu.’ 
They were so weak they couldn’t take care of 
each other. The poor woman could hardly 
crawl to the cupboard and get what little food 
there was, and she couldn’t cook it when she got 
it. 

“ But she managed to write in pencil on a bit 
of paper, 1 come over quickly.’ She put it in a 
piece of sealskin and tied it with a piece of deer- 
thong round a dog’s neck. 

“ He ran with it to the nearest house, which 
was ten miles away. And soon men came and 
brought them aid, and their lives were saved.— 
Well, John, I’m coming back in a day or two to 
see how you are. And I’ll call in on neighbor 
Martha Dennis, and she’ll make you some nice 
broth to take the place of the stew the dogs got.” 

“ Thank you, Doctor! I’ll be glad to see you 


SOME REAL SEA-DOGS 107 

when you comes back. I don’t know what us 
would do, if it wasn’t for you, Doctor! ” 

To the stories that the Doctor and his patient 
told each other might be added many more true 
tales of the intelligence of the “ husky ” dogs. 

Sometimes a man at work in the forest, get¬ 
ting in his winter’s supply of fire-wood, will send 
the dog home with no message at all. 

Then the good wife looks about, to see what 
the dog’s master has forgotten. It may be an 
axe-head, or his pipe, or his lunch of bread and 
potatoes. 

Whatever it is, she ties it to the dog and back 
he trots to his master in the woods, a willing ex¬ 
press-messenger. 

But one of the finest deeds set down to the 
credit of a “ husky ” is what a plain, every-day 
“ mutt” dog did at Martin’s Point, on the west 
coast of Newfoundland near Bonne Bay, in 
December 1919. 

The steamer Ethie, Captain English com¬ 
manding, was making her last southward trip of 
the season. I knew the Ethie well, every inch of 
her, for I had made the up trip and the down 
trip aboard her only a few weeks before. 


108 KNIGHT-EllRANT OF THE NORTH 

Through no fault of her gallant captain, she had 
been carrying a great many more passengers 
than she ever was meant to carry. On a pinch, 
she had accommodations for fifty. But on one 
trip, by standing up the fishermen in the wash¬ 
room as if they were bunches of asparagus, she 
had taken three hundred passengers. From a 
hundred to two hundred was a common number. 
I had been one of about twenty-five lucky 
enough to find a “ berth ” in the small dining- 
saloon. The berth was like a parcel-rack in a 
railway car. The people of the coast were sign¬ 
ing a long petition to have the miserable old tub 
laid up and a larger, modern vessel substituted. 

When Captain English was nearing Martin’s 
Point on the Ethie’s last voyage, a high sea was 
running, and she sprang a leak. The water 
rushed into the fireroom. Captain English 
went below and made an appeal to “ his boys ” 
not to desert their fires and not to fail him. 

“ If you will stick till we get round the Point 
we can beach her,” he said. The stokers man¬ 
fully plied their shovels: with the snow whirl¬ 
ing, and the wind blowing half a gale, the vessel 
struck, several hundred yards from the beach. 


SOME REAL SEA-DOGS 


109 


In a little while the waves, sweeping furiously 
over the deck, would have swept the ninety-two 
persons aboard into the sea. 

1 hey tried to fire a line ashore to the willing 
crowd that stood at the edge of the breakers. 

But the line fell short, across an ugly reef of 
jagged rocks half-way to the land. 

Then volunteers were asked to swim ashore 
with the rope. But none of the sailors knew 
how to swim. It is a rare accomplishment 
among sailors, especially in those bitter northern 
waters. So that plan was surrendered. 

A boat was launched. Before it had fairly 
hit the tremendous waves, it was dashed to pieces 
against the Ethie's side. 

The company on shipboard seemed at the end 
of their resources. But the people ashore had 
not been idle. 

There was a fisherman of Martin’s Point 
named Reuben Decker, who had a dog whom he 
had not taken the trouble to name at all. It was 
one of the young dogs in process of being broken 
to the sled, and in the meantime it was kicked 
and stoned and starved—not by the owner, but 
by strangers afraid of it, as is the general lot of 


110 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 
dogs in this part of the world, after they have 
done their best by man. 

The dog happened to be down at the shore, 
forlornly searching for sculpins and caplin. 
There was still open water between the shore 
and the ship. Reuben Decker pointed to the 
rocks across which the rope had fallen. At his 
word of command, the dog jumped into the sea, 
swam to the rocks, and seized the rope in his 
mouth. Then, with the cries from the ship and 
the shore ringing in his ears, he turned and be¬ 
gan to swim with it to the shore. It was not a 
heavy line. It was meant to be used to haul a 
thicker rope. But it was wet, of course, and 
partly frozen, and the miracle is how the animal 
managed to pull it through a sea where men did 
not dare to go. 

The watchers ashore, standing waist and 
shoulder deep in the waves, anxious to launch a 
boat as soon as the heavy swell would let them, 
watched the dog and clapped their hands and 
yelled to him to come on. 

“ Look at un! ” 

“ Swimmin’ like a swile!” 

“ Kim alang, b’y, kim alang!” 



Let’s Go ! 









SOME REAL SEA-DOGS 111 

" Man dear! My, my, my! Ain’t dat wun- 
nerful, now! ” 

“ Dat’m de b’y! ” 

“ By de powers!—Git y’r gaff, b’y! Help un 
in!” 

“We’ll have ’m all sove, soon’s us lays han’s 
on dat rope. Lord bless dat dog!” 

At one moment his little brown head would 
rise on the crest of a streaked, yeasty wave, the 
rope still in the white teeth—and then as the 
wave curled and broke he would be plunged to 
the bottom of the trough and they would lose 
sight of him. Would he come up again? 

“Yes—dere he be! My, my, my! Look at 
him a-comin’ and a-comin’! I never did see a 
dog the beat o’ un! By the livin’ Jarge, he’s got 
more sense ’n any o’ us humans! I tell ye, thet’s 
a miracle, thet’s what it is. Nothin’ short o’ a 
gospel miracle! ” 

So the comment ran—for those who said any¬ 
thing. But many were too surprised and 
thrilled to speak—and if they cried out it was 
when they all cheered mightily together as the 
dog, hauled through the surf by as many as could 
get their eager hands on him, scrambled out on 


112 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 
the beach and dropped the fag-end of the rope 
as if it were a stick, thrown into the water in 
sport, for him to retrieve. 

Now that communication was established, the 
next thing to do was to haul a heavier rope to 
the beach. On this a breeches-buoy was rigged 
without delay. In that breeches-buoy the 
ninety-two were hauled ashore. One of them 
was a baby, eighteen months old, who traveled 
in a mail-bag, “ pleasantly sleeping and un¬ 
aware.” The last to leave was the captain. 

The sea hammered the life out of the boat— 
but the human life was gone from it, and nobody 
cared. As for the dog—you can imagine how 
Reuben Decker’s cottage door was kept a-swing 
till it was nearly torn from its hinges, by friends 
who dropped in to pat him on the back, and look 
with curiosity at the animal which a few hours 
ago they ignored or despised. And Reuben did 
not tire of telling them all what a dog it was. 
He could safely say there was no better on the 
coast. Perhaps in the world. 

The rumbling echoes of the dog’s brave deed 
traveled “ over the hills and far away,” to Curl¬ 
ing, where lives from hand to mouth a little 


SOME REAL SEA-DOGS 


113 


paper called The Western Star . It has a cir¬ 
culation of 675 in fair weather and 600 when 
it storms. The editor is a man named Barrett, 
who is a correspondent of the Associated Press. 
He put a brief dispatch on the wire for all 
America. Some people in Philadelphia read it, 
and sent the dog a silver collar, almost big 
enough to go three times round his neck. Since 
the dog had no name, the word “ Hero ” was en¬ 
graved on the collar. 

The day of the presentation was a general 
holiday. All the way from St. John’s, people 
came to see “ Hero ” rewarded. Father Brennan 
made a speech, the sheriff was in his glory, and 
Reuben Decker and his dog, dragged blinking 
into the limelight, were equally dumb with 
modesty, surprise and gratitude. The cheer 
that was raised when the silver clasp of the 
magnificent collar clicked round “ Hero’s ” 
throat drowned out the loud music of the ocean. 

Now “ Hero,” freed forever from bondage to 
the sled, may lie by the fire in his master’s house, 
his head on his paws, his nose twitching, as he 
dreams of his great adventure. 


VI 


HUNTING WITH THE ESKIMO 

WHEN Dr. Grenfell first sailed his mission 
boat to the Eskimo settlements, the Eskimo 
swarmed aboard his little schooner, the Albert. 
They were singing a hymn the Moravian mis¬ 
sionaries taught them. 

“ What do you know about that? ” said Sailor 
Bill to Sailor Jim. “ Them fellers certainly can 
sing! ” 

“ Yes, an’ they got a brass band,” answered 
Jim. “Just hear ’em a-goin’ it, over there on 
the shore when the wind sets our way. You’d 
sure think the circus was cornin’ to town! Hey 
there, where you goin’, young feller? ” 

The “ young feller ” was an old Eskimo of 
about seventy, but Jim couldn’t be expected to 
know that. For he was all done up like a figure 
from fairy-land—in snow-white jumper, peaked 
fur cap, and sealskin boots. 

The Eskimo only grinned from ear to ear. 
He seemed ready to laugh at everything. His 
little bright eyes missed nothing. 


HUNTING WITH THE ESKIMO 115 

“ These husky-maws are so bloomin’ curious,” 
said Jim. “ Just like them husky dogs. Hafta 
take the lid off ’n’ look into everything. The 
cook says he dasn’t turn his back to the stove. 
Don’t you let ’em into the cabin! ” 

“ There’s one of ’em in there now! ” cried Bill. 
Out of a port-hole issued the notes of a hymn, 
which one of the Eskimo was pumping out of a 
melodeon. 

“ Come up outa there! ” yelled Bill, thrusting 
his head in at the doorway. 

The Eskimo didn’t understand the words, but 
he knew what the tone meant, and meekly turned 
a smiling face toward the sailor. 

Then he jumped up from his seat on the top 
of a keg and put out his hand. Bill took the 
pudgy, greasy little fingers. The Eskimo 
brought from somewhere in his blouse a piece 
of ivory carved in the likeness of a boat with 
rowers. 

“ How much d’ye want for that? ” asked Bill. 

The Eskimo shook his head. 

“ Are ye deaf? ” cried Bill. “ How much d’ye 
want for the boat? ” 

“Aw shucks!” exclaimed Jim. “Hollerin’ 


116 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

so loud don’t do no good. He dunno what 
you’re sayin’. He can’t talk English. Show 
him your clasp-knife. That’ll talk to him 
better’n you can. He wants to swop with ye.” 

Bill brought out the big knife. The little 
brown man nodded eagerly. Then he handed 
over the ivory boat. It was worth a great deal 
more than the knife. But not to the Eskimo. 
That knife would be a precious thing to help 
him carve meat and cut things out of sealskin 
and perhaps stab a polar bear. 

“ So everybody’s happy? ” laughed a clear and 
pleasant voice at Bill’s shoulder. “ You traded 
about even, did you? ” 

“ Guess so, Doctor. He’s got what he wants, 
and I’m goin’ to send the boat to the kiddies in 
the old country.” 

That night as the men sat around the cabin 
lamp with their pipes and a big pail of steaming 
cocoa, Dr. Grenfell told them something 
about the strange people they had come among. 

He had spent all day ashore among them, in 
various repairs to their bodies, and he had 
promised to come back to them in the morning. 

“They’re a nice, jolly, friendly lot,” he said. 


HUNTING WITH THE ESKIMO 117 
“ So different from the old days, before the 
Moravian missionaries came. 

“ You know, they always called themselves 
‘ Innuits.’ That means 1 the people.’ They 
said God went on making human beings till He 
made the Eskimo. When He saw them, He was 
perfectly satisfied, and didn’t make any more. 

“ But the early Norsemen came along, about 
a thousand years after the time of Christ, and 
called them ‘ skrellings.’ That means ‘weak¬ 
lings.’ It was the Indians who called them 
Eskimo. The word means ‘ eaters of raw 
meat.’ ” 

“ They’ve sure got some funny ideas about 
Hell ’n’ the Devil, Doctor! ” put in an old, wise 
sailor who was sitting deep in the shadows. 

“Yes they have!” agreed the Doctor. 
“ Their God, Tongarsuk, is a good spirit. He 
rules a lot of lesser spirits, called tongaks, and 
they run and tell the priests, who are called 
angekoks, what to do. The angekoks are the 
medicine-men and the weather-prophets. The 
Devil isn’t he, but she. And she is so dreadful 
that she hasn’t any name, because you’re not sup¬ 
posed to talk about her at all. 


118 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 


“ The angekoks are awfully busy fellows. 
They have to keep making journeys to the centre 
of the earth, the Eskimos believe. Because that’s 
where Tongarsuk the good spirit is, and they 
have to go and ask him what to do when the 
little spirits get lazy and won’t tell them. 

“ Anybody who thinks the angekok has an easy 
time of it on his voyage is mistaken. The 
journey has to be in winter. It must be at mid¬ 
night. The angekok’s body is standing alone in 
the hut—his head tied between his legs, his arms 
bound behind his back. In the meantime his 
soul has left the body, and is on the way to 
heaven or hell. 

“ That’s what an ordinary, every-day angekok 
has to do. But if you want to become an an¬ 
gekok poglit, which is a fat priest (meaning a 
chief priest), it hurts a lot more, and takes much 
more time and trouble. Then you have to let a 
white bear take your wandering soul and drag 
it down to the sea by one toe. They don’t tell 
you how a soul comes to have a toe to drag it by. 

“ When the soul reaches the seaboard, it must 
be swallowed by a sea-lion—and of course the 
soul may have to sit there in the cold for quite a 


HUNTING WITH THE" ESKIMO 119 

while waiting for a sea-lion to come along. 
After the sea-lion has swallowed it, the same 
white bear must reappear and swallow it too. 
Then the white bear must give up the spirit, and 
let it return to the dark house where the body is 
waiting for it. All this time the neighbors keep 
up an infernal racket with a drum and any other 
musical instruments they may happen to have. 

“ The Eskimo know very well that once there 
was a flood—but they cannot say exactly when. 
The trouble was that the world upset into the 
sea, and all were drowned except one man who 
climbed out on a cake of ice. They are sure of 
what they say, because although the oldest man 
alive only heard about it from the oldest man 
when he was a baby, they still find shells in the 
crannies of the rocks far beyond the maddest 
reach of the sea: and somebody once found the 
remains of a whale at the very top of a high 
mountain. 

“ You do not go up to heaven when you die: 
you go down,—way, way down, to the bottom of 
the sea, where the best of everything is. There 
it’s summer all the time. To the Eskimo there 
is no hell in being hot—hell is terrible cold. 


120 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

Down there where it is summer all the time you 
don’t have to chase reindeer if you want them to 
pull you about—they come running up to you, 
obliging as taxicabs, and ask you please to har¬ 
ness them and tell them where you would like to 
go. And your dinner is ready for you all the 
time: the seals are swimming about in a kettle of 
boiling water. The women don’t have to spend 
their time chewing on the sealskins to make 
them pliable for shoes and garments. The skins 
come off, all by themselves, already chewed—as 
nice and soft as can be, fit to make a bed for an 
Eskimo baby. 

“ His boat and his weapons go with the war¬ 
rior to his grave, so that his spirit may have the 
use of them in the next world. 

“ Once, one of the sailors from Newfoundland 
took something from a grave and hid it in his 
bunk. 

“ That night the dead Eskimo came looking 
for his property. 

“ It was pitch dark—but one of the crew 
saw and felt the ghost prowling about in the 
cabin! 

“ He yelled, and they lit the lamp. 


HUNTING WITH THE ESKIMO 121 

“ The ghost went out at the hatchway in¬ 
stantly. 

“ They put out the light, and the ghost came 
back. Then shouts were heard, 4 There he is! 
He’s a Eskimo! He’s huntin’ in Tom’s bunk! ’ 

44 After that, they kept the lamp lit all night 
long: and the next day, Tom went back and with 
trembling fingers restored what he had stolen 
to the grave. 

44 There are wide chinks in the rocky roof of 
every properly made Eskimo grave. This is 
not so that prowling sailor-men may reach in: 
it is so the spirits will have no trouble going in 
and out. 

44 You may still find lying in a grave a modern 
high-powered rifle ready for business, and good 
steel knives ready to carve those cooked seals 
down there in Heaven. I’ve even found pipes 
all ready filled with tobacco, to save the spirits 
the trouble of using their fingers to cram the 
bowl. 

44 Nowadays sealskins are exchanged for 
European goods, especially guns, and the 
Labrador Eskimo have lost much of the art of 
using their kayaks, the canoes into which they 


122 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

used to bind themselves securely, so that when 
they turned over in the water it did no harm. 
They would 4 bob up serenely ’ and go right on, 
and in contests one man would pass his boat 
right over that of a rival without risk of accident. 

“ The Eskimo and the Indians were bitter 
enemies. The story of the last fight is, that the 
Eskimo had their fishing-huts on an island off 
the mouth of a river. 

“ Down-stream by night crept the Indians in 
their war-canoes. These they dragged ashore 
and hid in the rocks. Next morning the Es¬ 
kimo came upon their enemies and at once 
attacked them. 

“ The Eskimo are little people as compared 
with the Indians. The Indians, their squaws 
fighting like bears beside them, drove the 
Eskimo back and back toward the sea. 

“ Stubbornly the ‘ huskies ’ contested every 
inch of the ground. Now and again they would 
crawl into holes among the rocks—but the 
Indians would find them there and cut them 
down without mercy, like animals trapped in 
their burrows. 

“ The Eskimo had their choice between the 


HUNTING WITH THE ESKIMO 123 

Indians and the sea. They would carry their 
children and even their wives down to the boats 
on their backs, and sometimes the frail skin- 
boats would turn over, and all the people in 
them would be drowned. If they succeeded in 
putting out to sea, they had no place to go: the 
Indians waiting ashore would get them when¬ 
ever and wherever they landed. 

“ At last—there were only the Indians in their 
war-paint, dancing and howling on the beach— 
not an Eskimo was left to tell the tale.” 

A few days later, Dr. Grenfell came to Hope- 
dale. 

There, he found, the Eskimo believed that 
Queen Victoria, away off there on the other side 
of the ocean, was sitting on a rock waiting for 
the Harmony (the Moravian mission ship from 
Labrador) to come in sight. 

They loaded him down with all sorts of mes¬ 
sages they wanted him to give her. 

Especially, they wanted him to say to her that 
they were very, very grateful to her for sending 
him over the seas to help them. 

When they learned that England was at war 
in Egypt, and a brave general was holding the 


124 KNIGHT-ERRANT OE THE NORTH 

upper Nile against a crowd of savages, although 
they hadn’t the slightest notion as to where 
Egypt was or who the Egyptians were, they got 
out everything they had in the way of firearms 
and began to drill up and down on the rocky 
beach. 

One old fellow had a policeman’s coat split 
up the back and much too big for him, and he 
dragged the tail of it along the ground like a 
bedraggled water-fowl. Pie also had a single 
epaulet that had come in a box of cast-off cloth¬ 
ing. 

On the strength of that uniform they made 
him captain of the company. 

Then they all marched up to the missionaries 
and said: 

“We want to go to war and help the Eng¬ 
lish!” 

“ It won’t be any use,” said the missionaries. 
“ Egypt is a long, long way off—and the war will 
be over before you could get there! ” 

“ Never mind! ” insisted the “ huskies.” 
“ We want to go! ” 

I hey kept on drilling and making warlike 
noises with their mouths till the ice melted and 


HUNTING WITH THE ESKIMO 125 

the cod came in. And after that, in the struggle 
with the cold sea and the barren land for a living 
they forgot all about war and the rumors of war. 

There were seals and bears and foxes to be 
hunted, instead of men. 

Dr. Grenfell found one man who was lucky 
enough to catch a black fox in a trap of stones. 

He was so happy over the catch that tears of 
joy ran down his face as he carried the precious 
skin to the store. He said God had heard his 
prayers and made his family suddenly rich. 

The storekeeper paid him forty-five dollars. 
That seemed like a fortune. The price was not 
paid in cash, however, but in food. 

Staggering under the load he came back to his 
hut, and when the stuff was put on the shelves 
it looked like such a lot he began to think he and 
his family never would be able to get it eaten 
before the end of the world came. 

So he sent out for his friends and neighbors. 

Be sure they came. An Eskimo can smell 
food cooking (or even merely rotting) for miles 
beyond the power of sight to detect it. 

The invitation ran: “ Come and eat and stay 
with me.” And then the Eskimo ran too, the 


126 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 
big ones tumbling over the little ones, and the 
dogs outstripping their masters, and all making 
loud noises according to their kind. 

Alas! in two days they had literally eaten their 
generous host out of house and home, and along 
with the dogs of the quarreling packs there was 
the wolf of hunger gnawing at the door. 

One of the Newfoundland fishermen left an 
Eskimo in charge of his supplies for the winter. 
Of these provisions he had set aside plenty for 
the Eskimo—for he knew how much a “ husky ” 
can eat. The Eskimo seems to have a “ bread¬ 
basket ” quite as extensible as any dog he drives. 

Then all the other Eskimo came swarming: 
and he fed them all, so that in two days the 
whole crowd were starving together. 

Grenfell found that the white man, green to 
the business of dog-driving or whale-hunting, 
had to win the respect of the Eskimo. 

The Eskimo knows that most of his paleface 
brethren from the south are wholly unable to 
paddle their own canoes. 

The white man, as a rule, cannot slay the seal, 
nor catch the cod, nor catch anything else except 
a cold. 


HUNTING WITH THE ESKIMO 127 


He cannot stand up to a polar bear with a 
knife in fair fight. 

He cannot sit out on a rock in a rain-storm 
all day without an umbrella and seem to enjoy 
it. 

He cannot stand hunger, thirst and frost, and 
he chokes when the fumes and the black smoke 
of oil lamps get into his throat. 

Then he is so funny about food! He doesn’t 
care for stinking fish: he doesn’t like his meat 
crawling with maggots after it has been buried 
in the ground; he doesn’t know how much better 
molasses tastes when mice have fallen into it and 
expired. 

The white man washes. How silly! He 
takes a brush made of little white bristles and 
rubs his teeth with it. Well, if the white man’s 
mouth, which is full of water, isn’t clean, then 
what part of him can be clean? And why does 
he turn up his nose at the Eskimo for being 
dirty? 

As for smells, what is a bad smell? The 
Eskimo doesn’t seem to know. In Kipling’s 
wonderful address on “ Travel,” before the 
Royal Geographical Society, he had much to say 


128 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

about smells, and how they suggest places. 
Eskimo taken to the World’s Fair in Chicago 
were homesick for the smell of decaying blub¬ 
ber, rancid whale-meat, steaming bodies in the 
igloo, the rich perfume of the dogs, and all the 
other aromatic comforts of home. As smells are 
their special delight, so dirt is their peculiar 
glory. A bath in warm water would make them 
as unhappy as it makes a cat. 

Fond of eating as they are, they like a change 
of food, and if bear-meat is all they find to eat 
in a certain spot, they hitch up and hike on to a 
better meal at a distance. They always want to 
be on the go. They rarely stay in one place 
more than a year or two. 

Even the rifle does not seem, in the long run, 
to be helping them much. When the sealer 
used a harpoon, he hardly ever missed the seal, 
for he always struck at close range. But with 
the rifle, shooting from afar, the sea often swal¬ 
lows up his prey ere he can reach it. The 
walrus has gone to the farthest North and the 
seal is becoming gun-shy very fast. 

As a hunter, the Eskimo is not wanting in 
nerve. A mighty hunter north of Nain was out 


HUNTING WITH THE ESKIMO 129 
gunning for big birds—ptarmigan, guillemot 
and divers,—when he came on a robust and 
fierce polar bear, a monstrous specimen. 

The Eskimo had a shotgun, not a rifle. It 
takes a ball cartridge of large calibre to do for 
Mr. Bruin ordinarily—and he can “ make his 
getaway ” with a good deal of lead in him. But 
the “ husky ” calmly walked up close to the bear, 
and discharged his shotgun pointblank in the 
face of the astonished animal. If the hunter 
had been at a distance, the bear would have 
minded the dose about as much as a pinch of 
pepper. As it was, the animal was blinded, and 
turned in fury on the hunter. 

The Eskimo tore off his sealskin tunic and 
threw it over the bear’s head, the way a bull¬ 
fighter confuses a charging bull with a mantilla. 
The bear stopped to tear the garment in pieces 
before proceeding to kill and devour the owner. 

But the delay was fatal to Mr. Bear. In jig¬ 
time the hunter had reloaded the gun. He put 
the second charge into the bear’s head through 
the eye,—and the monster expired at his feet. 

The boys have bows and arrows; they begin by 
practising on small birds and later become pro- 


130 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

ficient with a gun, so that by the time they are 
twelve years old they are veteran hunters. 

The greatest joy in the life of the Eskimo is 
to spend a day in a seal-hunt. 

Hours before dawn, the hunter climbs a rock 
and looks out to sea, anxious to learn if it will be 
a good day for his watery business. 

Then he gets his breakfast. In the old days, 
it was a drink of water. Nowadays, if the 
Eskimo has learned to like the white man’s hot 
drink, it may be a cup of coffee. 

At any rate, he drinks his breakfast: he 
doesn’t eat it. He says food in his stomach 
makes him unhappy in the kayak. 

The only food he takes with him is a plug of 
tobacco. He carries the kayak to the water, 
puts his weapons where he can get his hands on 
them instantly, climbs into the hole amidship 
and fastens his jacket round the circular rim. 

He may have to go a dozen miles out to sea. 
Now and then, to vary the paddling, he throws 
a bird-dart. Like the Eskimo harpoon, this 
dart and the stick that throws it are most in¬ 
genious contrivances, and beautifully wrought. 

The hunter grabs the beak of a wounded bird 


HUNTING WITH THE ESKIMO 131 

in his teeth, and with a wrench breaks the 
creature’s neck. He then ties his prey to the 
rear of the kayak and grins at the other hunters. 

At the hunting-ground, seals’ heads are to be 
seen everywhere, like raisins in a pudding. 
This is not sealing on the ice, as along the coast 
of Newfoundland: it is hunting them in open 
water—a very different thing. 

Papik (let us call him) spots the seal he wants 
and creeps up on it, paddling warily. 

The seal, a wise creature where such hunting 
is concerned, sees him and dives. 

Papik rests on his paddle, and gets his har¬ 
poon ready for the reappearance of the seal. 

It is a waiting game. Whenever the seal 
bobs up, the kayak is a little nearer, for while 
the seal is under water a few strokes of the 
paddle have cut down the distance. 

A seal can stay under water a long, long time. 

But an Eskimo, for his part, can sit all day as 
still as a tombstone in a cemetery. 

Woe be to the furry creature, if it waits a 
fraction of a second too long before it dives! 

In the clear sunlight the shaft flashes whistling 
from the throwing stick, the barb strikes, and the 


132 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

seal goes down in a welter of blood-stained foam. 
At the end of the harpoon line is a bladder—and 
as the bladder dances away over the surface, 
sometimes bobbing out of sight, Papik is after 
it like a hound chasing a rabbit. 

The bladder is to the barbed harpoon what 
the fisherman’s float is to the baited hook. 

When the seal comes up, furious to attack and 
punish the hunter, it first tears the bladder in 
pieces—then it makes at the kayak. 

But Papik is calmly ready. He has a lance 
with which he takes careful aim. 

The seal comes on, bent double to hurl itself 
forward with all its might. It seems strange 
that a creature usually so gentle can show such 
ferocity. 

The lance is flung. It goes through the seal’s 
mouth and comes out at the back of the neck. 
The seal shakes its head violently, but it is 
doomed. 

Papik’s second lance strikes through a flipper 
into the lungs. 

The seal is still alive as he comes close. Papik 
stabs it with his long knife, and it ceases to 
struggle at last. The seal is a creature that 


HUNTING WITH THE ESKIMO 133 

clings to life a long, long time. He ties the seal 
to the stern of the kayak, rearranges his ap¬ 
paratus, coils his rope, puts his lances in their 
place, and is ready for another. If he is in luck, 
he may paddle homeward with four seals, and 
even more, in his wake. 

If a storm comes before he gets to the shore, 
his watermanship is severely tested. He fights 
not only to bring his boat and himself through 
the tumult of the waters: he means to save 
every one of those carcasses wallowing along 
behind. 

In the midst of his hard fighting with the 
waves, which turn him over and roll him about, 
as he stubbornly rights himself after each cap¬ 
sizing and hurls himself through the next curv¬ 
ing green hillside of water, he comes upon a 
helpless comrade. 

Ordinarily, the second man, Patuak, could bob 
up again and go on, like stalwart Papik. 

But Patuak’s jacket worked loose at the rim 
of the body-hole of the kayak. The water rushed 
in. Now he is water-logged. He will lose his 
boat, his seals, his life, unless Papik can save 
him. 


134 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

Is Papik tempted to think only of himself and 
leave Patuak to his fate? If he is, it does not 
appear in what he does. He runs his kayak 
alongside that of his friend: he puts his paddle 
across both boats, and if he cannot bring in both 
kayaks, with such help as Patuak is able to give, 
he may even carry Patuak lying across the prow 
of his own boat. 

It is easier to drown a seal than to drown an 
Eskimo. 

The women stand on the rocks, shielding their 
eyes with their hands as they gaze eagerly sea¬ 
ward—just as the women of Nantucket stood on 
the roofs of the houses in olden times watching 
and waiting for the whaling-fleet. 

At the first sign of the approaching hunters a 
cry goes up: “They are coming!” 

Then they begin to count. 

They thank their own idea of Heaven when 
they find that—seals or no seals—their men are 
coming back in safety. 

If a man is towing seals, they shout his name 
with joy—and after it put the word “ kaligpok,” 
which means “ towing.” 

The women haul in the boats, rub noses with 


HUNTING WITH THE ESKIMO 135 
their husbands to show their affection, and pro¬ 
ceed to prepare the feast of raw blubber. 

After that feast the men tell the story of the 
day’s work—without boasting, but with touches 
of humor that send the listeners off into ringing 
peals of laughter. 

The story-telling is a part of the seal-hunt. 
The phrases are straight-flung as a seal-lance. 

“ When the time came for using the harpoon. 
I looked to it, I took it, I seized it, I gripped it, 
I had it fast in my hand, I balanced it ”—and so 
on. The audience, mouths agape, misses no 
word. It is the nearest thing the Eskimos have 
to motion pictures—and what a motion picture 
the whole of the seal-hunt is! No wonder the 
hunter lolls back like a lord, and lets himself be 
waited on, a conquering hero. 

The old men feel their youth renewed as they 
sit and listen to these wonder-tales. In their 
turn, they are moved to tell how they met the 
walrus in fair fight and overcame him. Per¬ 
haps the dreaded tusk went right through the 
side of the boat and wounded the hunter. But 
there are no friends like Eskimo friends for a 
man in such a plight. They killed the walrus— 


136 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 


they dined off the meat—and the tusks are kept 
to this day to show for it. A skin canoe against 
a walrus—that is a battle indeed. The younger 
men know what it means: and the old man is 
comforted by the remembrance of what he used 
to be. 

They are patient people, the Eskimo, and 
they need all the patience they have. An In¬ 
spector sent a boat-load of Eskimo to a fiord to 
get some grass for his goats. 

They were gone a long time, and he wondered 
what had become of them. 

When at last they returned, he asked them 
why they remained away so long. They told 
him that when they got to the place where he 
told them to go, they found the grass was too 
short. So they had to sit down and wait until 
it grew. Their time was of no value. And 
they had their orders to obey! 

The world owes it to these brave people not to 
take from them their birthright to their few 
possessions in the far places where they dwell. 


VII 


LITTLE PRINCE POMIUK 

There was an Eskimo boy named Pomiuk 
who lived in the far north of Labrador, at Na- 
choak Bay. Pomiuk had the regular sea-and- 
land training of the Eskimo boy. In summer 
his family lived in a skin tent, in winter they 
occupied an ice igloo. It is a fine art making 
one of those rounded domes—the curving blocks 
must be shaped and fitted exactly, so as to come 
out even at the top. 

Blubber in a stone dish supplied light and 
heat. If the air got too thick, father could 
thrust the handle of his dog-whip through the 
roof. Nobody bothered about bathing on Sat¬ 
urday night, and nobody minded the smell of 
rotten whale-meat for the dogs. In an atmos¬ 
phere that would stifle a white man, Pomiuk and 
his brothers and sisters throve and laughed and 
had the time of their lives. Pomiuk had his 
own whip of braided walrus hide, and even 
when he was little the dogs respected him and 


138 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

ran forward when he shouted “ oo-isht! ” turned 
to the right at “ ouk! ” and stopped and sat down 
panting when he shouted “ ah! ” 

When Pomiuk was ten years old a ship came 
on a strange errand. Pomiuk’s family and their 
friends were fishing for cod. But when the 
strange ship dropped anchor, they flocked to it 
shouting in their own tongue “ Stranger! 
stranger! ” When they learned why it came 
they were amazed. 

An Eskimo interpreter who came with the 
white men from the south explained that what 
they wanted was to take the Eskimo to that far- 
off land called America, where at a place called 
Chicago most wonderful things were gathered 
together in huge igloos for all the world to see. 
1 hey wanted the Eskimo to come themselves 
and to bring with them their boats and dogs, their 
sleds, their tools, their clothing, and the things 
with which they hunted whales and seals and 
polar bears. In fact the white men could not 
pretend to show the world anything very remark¬ 
able, unless such clever people as the Eskimo 
brought their things with them. 

The men from the south urged and flattered 


LITTLE PRINCE POMIUK 


139 


and argued till a number of the Eskimo let 
themselves be persuaded. The Eskimo had no 
idea of the trouble and disaster they were letting 
themselves in for, or they never would have 
started. The beautiful fairy-tales told by the 
white men inflamed their imaginations. They 
had always been very well pleased with their 
own white, cold world of whales and seals and 
kayaks—those canoes in which they are as much 
at home as the fish in the sea. But here was a 
chance to travel, and see marvels, and come 
home and rouse the envy of those who had not 
dared. It was too good a chance to miss. They 
would return rich men, and have nothing to do 
but brag about their adventures for the rest of 
their lives. 

Pomiuk’s father didn’t care to go. But he 
was broad-minded. It was a big sacrifice for 
him to part with his wife and son, for it is the 
teeth of the women that must chew the seal¬ 
skins to make them pliable for shoes and clothes: 
it is the fingers of women that do all the sewing. 
But Pomiuk’s mother could show the helpless 
white women how to make skin boots, and Pom- 
iuk could teach the paleface men and children to 


140 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

use the dog whip as he used it every day. If 
the Eskimo brought back money enough to buy 
many things at the nearest trading-post, the time 
spent on the long southward trek would not be 
wasted. The Eskimo, unlike the northern In¬ 
dian, is a good business man, counting his pup¬ 
pies after they are born and his fox-skins before 
he spends them. 

So the Eskimo sailed away from their own 
coast, with a gnawing homesickness at heart, 
though their lips were silent about it: and when 
they got to Chicago the life was strange with 
hideous sight and sound, and altogether unbear¬ 
able: and they longed to get away from it to the 
sea and the ice and behold again their northern 
lights, which to the Eskimo are the spirits of the 
dead at play. 

But there they were cooped up behind a stock¬ 
ade, like creatures at the zoo, to amuse the 
crowd, and be giggled at and poked toward as if 
they were some newly imported breed of 
monkey. An Eskimo likes as little as any other 
human to have fun made of him. 

Worst of all, they lived in the white man’s 
houses, and found the four walls instead of the 


LITTLE PRINCE POMIUK 


141 


“ wide and starry sky ” intolerable. A snow 
house has its own kind of stuffiness—the smell of 
whale-blubber and seal-oil to Eskimo nostrils is 
a sweet perfume. To be cooped up in a bed¬ 
room, and expected to sleep on a mattress with 
pillows, is pure torture. 

While they were on the exhibition stand, in 
the torrid heat, they had to wear those heavy 
clothes of furs and skins which the ladies said 
looked so picturesque. They knew how the 
polar bear felt in his cage away from his ice- 
blocks. The food the white man ate with relish 
was such queer stuff. They longed for that de¬ 
licious tidbit, the flipper of a seal. How good 
the entrails of a gull, or a fox’s stomach would 
have tasted! But the white men seemed to think 
that coffee, and watermelon and corn on the cob, 
and ham and eggs, and the pies their Eskimo 
mothers never used to make were good enough 
for them. Except for the warm blood of the 
seal, the Eskimo ordinarily has no use for a hot 
drink. 

Several of the older Eskimo wilted away like 
flowers, and died. They were buried and for¬ 
gotten ; and when the dogs died they were buried 


142 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

and forgotten too: there was about the same lack 
of ceremony in the one case as in the other. 

But little Pomiuk through thick and thin was 
the joyous life of the party. They worked him 
hard, because he amused the visitors. The visi¬ 
tors would throw nickels and dimes into the en¬ 
closure, and as the coins flickered in the air 
Pomiuk would lash out at them with his thirty- 
five foot whip. If he nicked the coin it was his. 
Then he would laugh—a very musical laugh, 
that could be heard a long way off. He was a 
jolly, friendly little soul, and he wore a smile 
that hardly came off even when he slept. 

But there came a time when even happy little 
Pomiuk could not smile. 

One day as he leapt high in the air, agile as a 
Russian dancer, to bring down one of those spin¬ 
ning coins with his whip, he fell on the boards, 
his hip striking a nail that stuck out. 

His mother ran to pick him up. His face was 
twisted with agony. 

He tried to stand, for her sake, but the effort 
was too much for him, and he sank back in her 
arms, weak as a baby. What was she to do? 
The men who ran the exhibit had not kept their 


LITTLE PRINCE POMIUK il3 

promises. Pomiuk was the chief bread-winner 
for them all. The coins he had nicked with his 
whip were most of what they had to spend. 

With this money they sent out and got a so- 
called “ surgeon ” who did not know his busi¬ 
ness, but took the money just the same. He 
patched up poor “ Prince ” Pomiuk so that the 
boy was worse off than before. 

The Fair closed: the Eskimo were stranded. 
If that had happened on a sea-beach at home, 
they would have known what to do: they would 
have laughed—for they are merry people, like 
our southern negroes—and they would have 
killed sea-birds with stones and made their way 
alongshore. But to be stranded in Chicago is 
another story. God knows how a few survivors 
of the band found pity in men’s hearts, and 
straggled back to their home at Nachoak Bay. 

Pomiuk’s wound never healed—he could not 
run about, nor walk, nor even stand. His 
mother had to carry him everywhere. In New¬ 
foundland the fishermen and the sealers, desper¬ 
ately poor as they were, took them into their 
bare cabins, and gave them bread and tea taken 
from the mouths of their own hungry children. 


144 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 


Dr. Frederick Cook, creation’s champion 
liar, did a golden deed for which the Recording 
Angel should give him a good mark in the Book 
of Life. He made room for several of the 
Eskimo on his journey to the Labrador coast: 
and fishing-schooners took the rest of the sur¬ 
vivors. 

Imagine how happy Pomiuk was, in spite of 
the pain in his hip, when he thought of crawling 
back into the mouth of his own snow house 
again, and rubbing noses with his father once 
more! 

But when the mother and the child were put 
ashore at Nachoak Bay—they were told that the 
father’s spirit was at play with the rest among 
the northern lights. In this world they would 
not see him again. He had been murdered 
while his wife and child were in Chicago. 

It was at that dark hour that Dr. Grenfell 
came into his life. 

Grenfell found the poor little boy, who had 
earned so much money, and brought so much 
glory to his tribe, lying naked on the rocks be¬ 
side the hut. The mother had married again, 
and gone off “ over the mountains ” with the 


LITTLE PRINCE POMIUK 145 

other children, leaving her crippled son to the 
tender mercy of the neighbors. It was indeed 
a “ come-down ” in the world for a “ prince,” 
whose father was a “ king ” among his fellows. 
It was deemed best to send Pomiuk south on the 
little hospital steamer with the Doctor. The 
Doctor could fix him up, if anybody could, and 
moreover—this was the clinching argument—he 
was “ no good fishing.” So the next day found 
Pomiuk bound south, clasping his only worldly 
possession—a letter from a clergyman of An¬ 
dover, Massachusetts. There was a photograph 
with it. If you asked Pomiuk what he had 
there, he would turn on that magic smile and 
show you the picture, and say: “ Me love even 
him.” 

The minister who wrote the letter sent money 
for the care of the poor “ Prince.” Next sum¬ 
mer Grenfell saw him again, and the child 
laughed as he said, “ Me Gabriel Pomiuk now.” 
A Moravian missionary had given him the name. 
They had made him as comfortable as possible 
at the Indian Harbor hospital: his own disposi¬ 
tion made him happy. He had been moved'from 
the hospital to a near-by home, and he hopped 


146 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 


about on crutches as gayly as though he could 
run and play like the other children. 

But malignant disease in his hip was sapping 
his strength, just as the ants of Africa will eat 
away a leg of furniture till it is a hollow shell, 
and one day the whole table or chair falls crash¬ 
ing. His strength was ebbing fast. Suddenly 
he became very ill: he was put to bed, with high 
fever, and was often unconscious. In a week he 
was dead. But that little generous, courageous 
life was the foundation-stone of Dr. Gren¬ 
fell’s noble orphanage at St. Anthony, put up 
with the pennies of American children, where I 
had the pleasure of telling dog-stories to smiling 
Eskimo boys in the summer of 1919. Gabriel is 
the angel of comfort: and this small Gabriel has 
left behind him the comfort of fatherless homes 
in Labrador for ages yet to be. 

Dr. Grenfell says that on the night of his pass¬ 
ing the heavens were aflame with the aurora. 
It was as though little Prince Pomiuk’s father 
had come to welcome him, and they were at play 
once more in the old games they knew. 


VIII 


CAPTURED BY INDIANS 

In the lonely interior of Labrador in mid¬ 
summer an old man sat on the rocky ground 
with a ring of Indians about him. 

He was “ Labrador ” Cabot of Boston. Year 
after year he had gone to Labrador to visit the 
Indian tribes and study their ways. He could 
talk the Indian language and understand what 
they said to him. 

“ What’s the matter with your leg? ” asked the 
Chief, a big, strong fellow with keen eyes. 
“ Can’t you walk? We must get started if we 
want to find the deer.” 

“ I think I must have broken my leg when I 
slipped and fell on the rocks,” answered Mr. 
Cabot. 

He made an effort to rise and stand, but sank 
back helplessly. 

A curious, evil grin spread across the red 
man’s face. 

u You’re sure you can’t walk? ” 


148 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

Mr. Cabot shook his head. 

“ What will you do? ” 

“ One thing is sure,” said Mr. Cabot, “ I’ll 
have to stay with you if I’m to get out of this 
place alive.” 

“ We can’t let you keep us back,” answered 
the Indian. “ We might leave you here with a 
fire and something to eat.” 

“ And what would I do after the fire went out 
and the food was gone? ” 

The Indian shrugged his shoulders. “ I 
don’t know.” 

“ Can’t some of your men make a litter of 
boughs and carry me? ” pleaded Mr. Cabot. 

“ They could if they wanted to,” answered the 
Indian, coldly. “ But I don’t think they want 
to.” 

“ Haven’t we always been friends? ” urged 
Mr. Cabot. 

“ I suppose so.” 

“ Haven’t I been here summer after summer, 
and helped you, and given medicine to sick 
people?” 

The Indian picked up handfuls of sand and 
threw them on the fire. “ Yes, and you were 


CAPTURED BY INDIANS 149 

always writing in a little book. Maybe when 
you went away from here you told lies to the 
world about us. Who knows? ” 

Mr. Cabot was puzzled. Was this the 
friendly, peaceful Chief he knew before he had 
the misfortune to fall and hurt his leg? 

In spite of the pain he was suffering, he tried 
to talk calmly and not show that he was afraid 
of being left behind. “ Why have you turned 
against me? ” 

“What do you mean?” the Indian chief 
answered. 

“ A little while ago you seemed like my 
friend. Now you are willing to leave me here 
where there are no fish, and the deer do not 
come, and the mosquitoes are worse than any 
wild animals. What is the meaning of all 
this?” 

“ I will tell you,” the Indian answered, very 
slowly. “ You must pay us for what a white 
man did to us.” 

“ What do you mean? ” 

“ Listen, and you shall hear. 

“ Last year, we had fox furs—very many and 
very fine. Wc had risked our lives! we had 


150 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

starved and frozen to get them. All over Un- 
gava we had tracked and trapped in the wilder¬ 
ness. 

“ Then—see what happened. A trader came 
among us. He had much money. It was not 
like any money we had seen before, but he said 
it was a new kind of money. And he would give 
us more of it for our furs than any man had 
given us before. 

“ He gave us much to drink. We had a 
feast, and dancing. The trader gave handsome 
presents to our wives. Beads and bright 
cloth for dresses. He gave us tobacco, and 
whiskey. 

“ When we did not know what we were doing, 
he bought our furs. He bought them all. He 
gave us this new, strange money and much of 
it. Then he went away. We fired guns in the 
air to honor him. We shook hands with him. 
We thought he was our friend. We promised 
to be friends with him as long as sun and moon 
endured. 

u He smiled, and waved, and went away—and 
we, we had nothing of him but the money. It 
was paper, all of it, very bright and new and 


CAPTURED BY INDIANS 151 

green, with printed marks on it we could not 
read. 

“ Some shook their heads when he had gone, 
and said, 1 No, no, brothers. We should not 
have taken this green paper and given him those 
furs.’ 

“ But others said, 1 Look what he has paid 
us! We are all rich men. The price is better 
than we ever had before! * 

“ The old, wise men said, ‘ How do you know 
that it is more, when you do not know how much 
it is?’ 

“ So, night and day, there was talking to and 
fro—along the trail by day, around the camp¬ 
fire when the sun had set. 

“ It soon came time for us to send men down to 
Rigolet, on Hamilton Inlet, there to buy at the 
Hudson’s Bay store the things that we would 
need in the winter time. 

“ We sent twelve of the strong young men in 
their canoes to get the things and bring them 
home to our tents. We were happy wher> we 
thought of all the guns and tobacco, all the flour 
and the fine clothes so much money would buy. 

“ They went: and they were gone many days, 


152 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

while we waited in one fixed place for them, and 
in our minds spent the money many times over.” 

Then the Indian paused. He was squatting 
on his haunches, and puffing at his pipe. Mr. 
Cabot’s leg was giving him much pain, but he 
was too proud to ask the Indian to do anything 
for him. 

The Indian’s face grew very stern as he re¬ 
membered. His tone became as hard as the ex¬ 
pression of his face. He looked at Mr. Cabot 
and clenched his fist. “ When our men came to 
the storekeeper, they walked all about the store. 
* I’ll take that fine dress,’ said one. 1 Give me 
that shotgun,’ said another. 1 1 will have this 
bag of tobacco,’ said a third. Some took flour, 
and some chose bright ornaments for their wives, 
and others took candy, and one man got a talking- 
machine. Some chose the best clothes in the 
store. They also took much food of every kind, 
and ammunition for the guns. 

“ They made great piles of the things on the 
floo£, to take them to the canoes. 

u Then they brought out their money to pay 
for all these things. 

“ ‘ What is that stuff? ’ said the storekeeper. 


CAPTURED BY INDIANS 153 

“ 1 That? It is our money. It is what a 
trader paid us for our furs.’ 

“ 4 What was his name? ’ 

“ ‘ That we do not know. We did not ask. 
We do not care who buys from us; all we care is 
that he buys. One man’s money is as good as 
another’s.’ 

“ Then the storekeeper laughed in their 
faces. And he said: ‘You have been fooled. 
You have been fooled as easily as little children. 
Do you know what this “ money ” is that you 
have given me? ’ 

“ ‘ No,’ they said. 

“ ‘ It is not money at all,’ he told them. ‘ It 
is nothing but labels from beer bottles. You 
cannot have those things you have piled up on 
the floor. I will take them back and keep 
them here until you bring me real money for 
them.’ 

“ Then they said to him , 1 But it is all we have. 
We cannot go back to our people with nothing.’ 

“ He said: ‘ I cannot help that. It is no fault 
of mine.’ 

“ They wanted to fight—but it would do no 
good to kill the agent or drive him away. 


154 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 
There would be no one from whom to get things 
another year. 

“ ‘ You ought to have brought your furs to me. 
I would have given you real money for them/ 
said the agent. 

“They went away very sorrowful. After 
many days they came back to us again. We 
were very glad when we saw them coming—but 
we wondered that their canoes were not piled 
high with the things we had told them to buy. 

“ When we heard their story we were very 
sorrowful. We talked about it a great deal. 
We said, * What shall we do? ’ 

“ Then we made up our minds. This is what 
we decided. We said: 4 The next white man 
that comes among us we shall hold. We shall 
not let him go until he pays to us a sum of 
money, seven hundred dollars, equal to that 
which we have lost. Since he is a white man 
he or his friends must make up to us that which 
we have lost at the hands of a white man.’ 

“ So now you see—you are the man. And it 
is you that must pay back to us the money.” 

“ But I haven’t seven hundred dollars.” 

“ Then you must promise that you will pay it, 


CAPTURED BY INDIANS 


155 


or get your friends to pay it. These many years 
you have come here among us. We will trust 
you for that. It is much that we should trust 
you—when it is one of your own people who 
brought such suffering and loss upon us.” 

“But this is an outrage!” said Mr. Cabot. 
“ I never did anything to you but good. You 
know that.” 

“ Yes, we know that,” said the Indian, gravely. 
“ But we shall leave you here unless you pay. 
You cannot find your way out alone—even if 
you could stand and walk upon your broken leg. 
We shall not carry you from here unless you pay 
the money. Is that not so? ” 

He turned to the others, who had not said one 
word all this while: they had been merely look¬ 
ing on and listening. 

“ Yes,” they said. “ He has spoken for us all. 
As he has said, we shall do. You shall be left 
here, if you do not pay.” 

“The Great Spirit has given you into our 
hands,” the Chief declared. “ When you came 
to us this summer again, we said among our¬ 
selves that he had sent you. We did not know 
that he would cause you to break your leg. We 


156 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

were going to keep you even if this had not hap¬ 
pened. Now the Great Spirit has caused this 
hurt to happen to you. We see, by this, that we 
were not mistaken. He sent you to us as surely 
as he sends the fish or the deer when we have 
need of food. It is for you to choose, if you will 
pay, and go on with us to the coast—or refuse 
to pay and be left here in the wilderness to 
die.” 

So Cabot had to sign a promise to pay them 
the $700 for a great rascal whose name neither 
he nor those Indians will ever know. 

They made a stretcher and put him on it, and 
carried him with them out to the coast. 

If they had not done so—his white bones 
would now be bleaching beside the cold embers 
of a camp-fire in the desolate interior of Labra¬ 
dor. 

Do you blame those Indians for wanting to 
“ take it out” of the first member they met, of 
a race that bred such a rogue as the man who 
cheated them? 

Dr. Grenfell tells us that for about two hun¬ 
dred years the Eskimo of the interior and the 
Indians of the coast were at war with one 


CAPTURED BY INDIANS 


157 


another. There was a battle, long, long ago, in 
which Indians killed a thousand Eskimo. 

But nowadays when the Eskimo and Indians 
come together they have no quarrel. 

There was such a meeting at Nain in 1910. 
It was the first time the Eskimo had ever seen 
Indians in that tiny fishing-village, and they 
“ ran about in circles ” in their excitement. 

It was on a Sunday afternoon when the 
Indians appeared. They had come down a 
stream from the interior, and when they rounded 
the bend in their boats—of a kind that was 
strange to the Eskimo—the latter set up a cackle 
like that of a barnyard when a hawk appears. 

The Indians, with their bundles on their 
shoulders, filed ashore, made their way to a hut 
the kindly Moravian missionary let them use, 
and sat in muddy, weary silence round the walls. 

The Eskimo crowded into the doorway, their 
tongues hanging out, staring at these queer folk 
as if they had dropped from the moon. 

But other Eskimo, kind-hearted and hospi¬ 
table, were moved to show the strangers what 
shore life was like. 

They got busy at the stove, boiled water, and 


158 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

presently handed about large cups of tea, with 
sugar and biscuit. 

The Indians devoured the refreshments thank¬ 
fully, for they were very hungry. The North¬ 
ern Indians lead lives that are often sharpened 
with hunger for long periods together. You 
can see it in their lank frames and their gaunt 
faces. The southern Indians, nearer the flesh- 
pots, with kindly priests at work among them, 
look roly-poly, chubby and content. 

It was a very silent party. The Indians who 
had been so bold as to come this far to the sea 
were probably homesick for the flat stones, the 
dwarf birches, the far-lying ponds and cold 
swirling streams, the hordes of mosquitoes and 
the caribou of their lone spaces at Indian House 
Lake. The cluster of houses at Nain looked to 
them as New York would seem to one who 
had always dwelt in the heart of the Maine 
woods. 

By morning, after a sound sleep on the floor, 
they were eager to begin trading. 

A southern Indian translated. 

They had brought deerskins chiefly. There 
are few valuable furs in their part of Labrador, 


CAPTURED BY INDIANS 


159 


but they did their best to make a brave showing 
with the few they were able to find. 

You can imagine their people at home at 
Indian House Lake saying before the start of 
the expedition: “ Oh, if we only had some beaver 
or marten skins! Wouldn’t it be nice, now, if 
we could get a silver or a cross fox? Those 
people down there at the coast know such a lot, 
and are so rich, and so particular! Nothing but 
the very best we have will do.” 

They held up a bearskin with great pride. 
They had a wolverine,—the only sort of fur on 
which snow will not freeze,—several wolf-skins, 
and moccasins, embroidered. The translator 
would point to what they wanted on the shelves. 
Then they would take the object in their hands 
and weigh it very carefully, thinking of all those 
portages on the homeward trail—probably 
twenty at least—over which every ounce must be 
carried on a man’s shoulders. 

They bought lots of tea—one man getting as 
much as sixteen pounds. They wanted gay 
prints. Other things to which they took a fancy 
were tobacco, cartridges, fish-hooks, matches, 
needles, and pearl buttons. First they handed 


160 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 


over the skins, and received money in return: 
then they spent the money. Mouth-organs were 
much in demand, and they looked longingly at 
an accordeon and tried to play on it and were en¬ 
chanted with the squawks that came out: but 
they were not rich enough to buy it. One boy 
bought a clay pipe, and spent all his time licking 
it. They were not allowed to smoke in the store, 
but they spat wherever they pleased. 

Doctor and Mrs. Grenfell are out on the war¬ 
path against this disgusting custom, and they 
have had very hard work to persuade even the 
“ liveyeres ” that there is danger concealed in 
germs that cannot be seen, when saliva dries and 
the wind blows it about. In all this glorious 
fresh air it is mournful to think of the many 
who die of consumption, pneumonia and all sorts 
of lung-trouble, because of stifling houses and 
unclean habits. 

The Indians at first were extremely shy. 
Then they waxed merry, and as they bought they 
laughed and chatted. In the party were three 
women. One of them was young and good- 
looking, and she was showered with presents— 
kettles, cups and saucers, perfumed soap and 


CAPTURED BY INDIANS 


161 


cologne! A young man bought for her any¬ 
thing she wanted—and every time he made a 
purchase for the fair one the others laughed 
aloud. And each time he bestowed a gift, one 
of the other women turned to her husband and 
made him buy the same thing for her. Human 
nature is the same on the Labrador as on Coney 
Island. 

It took two days for them to do their buying, 
and wrap up their purchases, and say farewell. 

By this time Indians and Eskimo were sworn 
friends. 

The Eskimo crowded to the end of the little 
pier, and knelt down to reach over and grasp 
the hands of the parting guests. There were 
shouts of “ Yomai! ” from the Indians, and vari¬ 
ous cries in answer from the Eskimo. Then, 
crouching on their heels, the Indians trimmed 
their sails to the breeze and were borne swiftly 
round the point to be seen no more. 

How different is all this from the days of old, 
when the Eskimo were called “ the most savage 
people in the world!” 


IX 


ALONE ON THE ICE 

In April, 1908, Dr. Grenfell had the closest 
call of his life. Of course in April the ice and 
snow are still deep over the bays and forelands 
of Labrador and northern Newfoundland. 
There is not the slightest sign that spring with 
its flowers and mosquitoes is coming. All travel 
save by dog-team is at a standstill, and only a 
life-and-death message—such as Dr. Grenfell 
is constantly getting—is a reason for facing the 
howling winds and the driving snows of the 
blizzards that the bravest seamen and the might¬ 
iest hunters have good reason to fear. 

On Easter Sunday morning at his St. Anthony 
home Dr. Grenfell was walking back from 
the little church to his house after the morning 
service, thinking of the sermon, and of his 
mother in England. 

Suddenly a boy came running after him from 
the hospital near by. 

“ Oh, Doctor, Doctor! ” 


ALONE ON THE ICE 163 

The Doctor turned in his deep, floundering 
steps to see who it was that called him. 

“ Doctor,” panted the small messenger, “ I 
came to the hospital to fetch ye. There’s a man 
with dogs, from sixty mile away down to the 
south, and he says they must have a doctor come 
to ’em, right off, or the boy ’ll die.” 

The Doctor put his kind hand on the little 
fellow’s shoulder. “ Who is it that is sick? ” 

“ I dunno, Doctor, but he’s wonderful sick. 
He’ll die unless ye come.” 

The Doctor thought a moment—then he re¬ 
membered. It was a young man on whom he 
had operated two weeks before, for a bone 
disease that was eating away his thigh. 

Those who had tried to help him had closed 
up the wound—the worst thing to do. The 
poison had collected, and probably the leg 
would have to be taken off. 

The Doctor knew that every minute counted. 
He went to his kennels in the snow and picked 
out his sturdiest dog-team. They whined and 
pawed and jumped up and down, eager to be 
chosen. The real “ husky ” hates to loaf, except 
when he has come in from a long, hard run late 


164 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

at night and has had his meal of fish. He wants 
to be at work all the time, and when the sled is 
loaded the dogs must be tied up tight or they 
will dart away at breakneck speed and perhaps 
upset everything. This sleigh was heavy-laden 
with instruments, drugs and dressings. A 
second team was to follow, with the messengers. 

Dr. Grenfell loved, as with a personal affec¬ 
tion, every one of the five beasts that were taking 
him on this long haul to save a boy’s life. 

First came “ Brin,” by common consent the 
surest leader anywhere on the coast. The 
strongest dog of the team—big and affectionate 
and playful—was “ Doc.” A black and white 
dog whose muscles were like small wire ropes, 
was “Spy,” and “Moody,” now in his third 
year, was a black-and-tan named for Dr. 
Grenfell’s friend Will Moody, son of the evan¬ 
gelist. “ Moody ” had the reputation of never 
looking behind him: he was eager to go on to the 
bitter end. 

The youngest dog of the team, named 
“Watch,” had beautiful soft eyes, a Gordon 
setter coat, and long legs capable of carrying 
him over the frozen crust at a tremendous rate 


ALONE ON THE ICE 


165 


of speed. Then there was “ Sue,” the most 
wolf-like of the lot—black as jet, her pointed 
ears the standing question-marks for further 
orders. “Jerry” was a perfect lady, quick on 
her feet as a dancer, and so fond of play and so 
demonstrative that she often tipped the Doctor 
over when he had a boxing-bout with her, and 
sent him sprawling on his back in the snow. 

“Jack,” a black dog with the looks and the 
ways of a retriever, had “ Moody’s ” good habit 
of going straight on without turning to see who 
followed, and he was put in the position of trust 
nearest the sledge. He liked to run with his 
nose close to the ground, and nothing that the 
trail or the snow-crust could tell any wise 
“ husky ” dog was a secret to the busy nose of 
this gentle-natured fellow. 

Do you wonder that Dr. Grenfell was 
proud and fond of these four-legged helpers, 
and that he gave them the tender care one be¬ 
stows on children? It would have grieved him 
to the heart to think of any accident happening 
to any of them. He looked on them just as a 
Captain Scott or a Sir Ernest Shackleton re¬ 
garded his mates on a Polar expedition. They 


166 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

were his friends and helpers. Some of them 
had stood by him in many a hard tussle with the 
cold and the stinging hail, with the rotten ice 
threatening to let them down into the river or 
the sea. With their bushy tails thrown over 
them like fur wraps, they had slept in the snow¬ 
drift round his camp-fires. They seemed to him 
like human beings, his little brothers. As he is 
fond of saying, “ Dogs are much nicer than a 
Ford car. A Ford car can’t come and kiss you 
good-night.” 

Since it was late April, and the melting ice 
might mean a soaking any moment, Grenfell 
carried a spare outfit—a change of clothes, an 
oilskin suit, snowshoes, an axe, a rifle, a compass. 
He knew there was no place to stop and get any 
of these things if he should lose them. The 
most daring skipper of a boat or driver of a sled 
along the coast, the Doctor takes no chances 
when it comes to his equipment. 

Though the messengers had broken the trail 
on the up journey, they preferred to fall in be¬ 
hind the Doctor on the down trip. They knew 
that he would want to travel like the wind. 
They felt a certain security and comfort in let- 


ALONE ON THE ICE 


167 


ting him take the lead. It relieved them of a 
lot of responsibility for setting the course. There 
are always people traveling in Grenfell’s wake 
who are willing to let him make the hard choices 
and take the daring chances. But a good rea¬ 
son for Grenfell’s going first this time was that 
his picked team of young, strong, spry dogs were 
hustlers, whom it would be impossible to hold 
back, and the other dogs were heavier and 
slower. 

Although Grenfell in the twenty miles before 
nightfall twice called a halt, the slower team 
behind him was unable to catch up. He reached 
a small hamlet and had given his eager dogs 
their supper of two fish apiece, and was gather¬ 
ing the people together for prayers when the 
second team overtook him. 

In the night the weather changed. The wind 
began to blow from the northeast; a fog set in, 
with rain. The snow became mushy, to make 
hard going, and out in the bay the sea was ugly, 
with the water heaving the ice-pans about. The 
plan for the coming day was to make a run of 
forty miles, the first ten miles a short cut across 
a bay, over the salt-water ice. 


168 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

Grenfell did not want to get too far from his 
convoy, and so he let the second team start on 
ahead, with a lead of two hours. 

He told them just where to call a halt and wait 
for him. There was a log hut, or “ tilt,” at the 
half-way point. Since there was no one living 
on that part of the very lonely coast-line, this 
hut was a refuge fitted out with anything that a 
shipwrecked mariner or a benighted traveler by 
land might need—dry clothes, food, and medi¬ 
cines. 

“ You go to the hut and wait there till I 
come,” were the Doctor’s final orders. 

The rain began to fall, and when Grenfell 
got under way it was such treacherous going that 
he couldn’t cut straight across the bay as he 
wished, but had to keep closer to the land. The 
sea had risen in its wrath and thrown the pans 
of ice about, so that there were wide spaces be¬ 
tween, and half a mile out from the shore it was 
clear water. 

But far out from the shore there was an 
island, and by a daring series of jumps across 
the cracks, the dogs as buoyant as their master, 
hauling the sled as though it were a load of 


ALONE ON THE ICE 


169 


feathers,—Grenfell reached the island, and made 
the dogs rest—a hard thing to do—while he 
looked about him to see where the next lap of the 
journey would take him and them. 

It was four miles, he knew, to a rocky head¬ 
land over yonder, if he ventured out on that 
uncertain field of ice. That would save several 
miles over the more prudent course alongshore. 

As far as he could see, the ice looked as though 
it would hold up the sled. It was rough—but 
a hardened voyager with a dog-team is accus¬ 
tomed to a hummocky road. It looked as if the 
sea had torn it up, as men tear up the paving 
blocks in a city street, and then thrown the bits 
together to make a hard, cohesive mass that men 
and dogs could surely trust. The strong wind 
seemed to have packed it in and the intense cold 
of the night, he supposed, had frozen it solid. 

The wind died down, and Grenfell found that 
he was deep in what is known as “ sish ”—soft 
ice as mushy as the name sounds. He compares 
it to oatmeal, and it must have been many feet 
deep. There was a thin coating of new ice on 
top of it, through which the whip-handle easily 
pierced. 


170 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

The “ sish ” ice is composed of the small frag¬ 
ments chipped off the floes after the pounding 
and grinding between the millstones of the great 
winds and the heavy seas. The changing 
breeze now blew from offshore, and instead of 
packing the ice together it was driving it apart. 
The packed “ slob ” was “ running abroad,” as 
the fisher-folk say. The ice-pans were so small 
that there was hardly one as large as a table-top. 

By this time the team had come to a halt on 
one of these tiny pans, and with the other pans 
floating about as the entire sheet was breaking 
up the peril was evident. It was not possible to 
go back—the way was cut off by the widening 
spaces between the pans. Only about a quarter 
of a mile was left between their pan and the 
shore. 

Grenfell threw off his oilskins, knelt by the 
side of the komatik, and ordered the dogs to 
make for the shore. 

It takes a great deal to “ rattle ” a husky. 
But the dogs, after about twenty yards of half- 
wading, half-swimming, were thoroughly fright¬ 
ened. They stopped, and the sled sank into the 
ice. With the sled in the freezing water, it was 


ALONE ON THE ICE 


171 


necessary for the dogs to pull hard, and now 
they too began to sink. 

Not long before, the father of the boy to 
whom the Doctor was going was drowned by 
being tangled in the dog’s traces in just such a 
place as this. To avoid that danger, Grenfell 
got out his knife, and cut the traces in the water. 

But he still kept hold of the leader’s trace, 
which he wound about his wrist. 

In the water there was not a piece of ice to be 
seen in which dogs or driver could put their 
trust. The dogs were as eager as their master 
to find something to cling to. Care-free and jolly 
as they had been hitherto, they knew as well as 
he that death by drowning stared their little 
caravan in the face. 

About twenty-five yards away there was a 
big lump of snow, such as children put up when 
they mean to make a snow-man. The leading 
dog, “ Brin,” as he wallowed about managed to 
reach it, at the end of his long trace of about 
sixty feet. “ Brin ” had black marks on his face, 
which made it look as though he were laughing 
all the time, like one who finds this world a 
grand, good joke. When he clambered out on 


172 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 
the hummock he shook his coat and turned round 
and gazed calmly at his master. 

“ He seemed to be grinning at me,” says the 
Doctor. 

But it was no laughing matter for the other 
dogs, floundering about. 

Grenfell hauled himself along toward 
“ Brin ” by means of the trace still attached to 
his wrist. But suddenly “ Brin ” stepped out 
of his harness, and then the Doctor found him¬ 
self sprawling and struggling in the water, with 
no means of getting to the place where “ Brin ” 
had found temporary safety. 

Grenfell thought this time it was all over. 
He had looked Death in the eyes before, but 
Death had decided to go by. This time, it did 
not seem possible to escape. He did not feel any 
great alarm—in fact, he became drowsy, and 
thought how easy it would be just to fall asleep 
and forget everything, as the icy water chilled 
and numbed his senses. He was like the weary 
traveler who drops into the snow-bank, on whom 
the torpor steals by slow degrees. 

Suddenly Grenfell caught sight of a big dog 
that had gone through the ice and was pulling 


ALONE ON THE ICE 


173 


the trace after him, in a desperate effort to reach 
the hummock on which “ Brin ” was sitting. 
Grenfell grabbed the trace, and hauled himself 
along after the animal. He calls this “ using 
the dog as a bow anchor.” 

But the other dogs were following this poor 
beast’s example, and they crowded and jostled 
the Doctor so that it was hard for him to hold 
on. One of them, in fact, got on his shoulder, 
very much as a drowning man in his desperation 
will throw his arms round the neck of someone 
who tries to rescue him, and drag him under. 
This pushed Grenfell still deeper into the ice, 
and it was a question whether his energy would 
hold out in that frigid water. 

As they say on the football field, he now had 
only three yards to gain, and by a mighty effort 
he drew himself past his living anchor and 
climbed up on the piece of slob ice. He rested 
a moment to draw breath, and then began to haul 
his beloved dogs one after another up to a place 
beside him. They swam and panted through 
the lane in the ice that he had broken, and 
seemed to understand perfectly that their master 
was trying to save them, even though they 


174 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 
had lost their heads and had almost drowned 
him. 

It would not do for them all to remain on that 
small, treacherous lump of ice. It might break 
in two at any moment with the combined weight 
of dogs and driver. It was slowly drifting with 
the tidal current out to the open sea, where all 
hope would be lost. Grenfell knew that if he 
were to save his team and himself—they were 
always first in his thoughts—he must act 
instantly. 

He stood up to survey the scene. About 
twenty yards away there was a good-sized pan 
floating about in the “ sish ” like a raft, such as 
that on which Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer 
floated down the Mississippi. To reach that 
raft would at any rate be to postpone death for a 
little while. But it was taking too much of a 
risk, to try to get from the little cake to the big 
one without a life line. How was he to make 
such a line, and then how was he to get it across 
the wide space between? 

Fortunately when the Doctor cut the dogs 
away from the sled he had not lost his knife: he 
had tied it to the back of one of the dogs. There 


ALONE ON THE ICE 


175 


it was still. It was the work of a joyful moment 
to untie it, and he fell to work cutting from the 
dogs’ harness the sealskin traces that remained 
and stringing those together to make two long 
lines. His overalls, coat, hat and gloves were 
gone, but he still had his sealskin hip-boots. He 
took these off, shook them free from ice and 
water, and tied them on the backs of “ Brin ” and 
another dog. Then he fastened the lines to the 
two animals, tying the near ends round his 
wrists. 

“ Hist! ” he shouted—the signal to go on: but 
the dogs refused to budge. They were setting 
their own wits against their master’s. Such dogs 
believe they know their business. They saw 
no proper place to go to. Why should they dash 
into the icy water for the sake of reaching 
another pan not much bigger than their own? 
If it were land—that would be another story. 
So they must have reasoned, in their doggish 
fashion. They had been devoted and obedient 
—but there were limits even to their faith. 

Grenfell three times threw the dogs off the 
pan. Each time they struggled back upon it: 
and their master could not blame them. 


176 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 
“ This is really the end! ” Grenfell told him¬ 
self. “ We never shall get out of this! ” 

Just as a boy sometimes comes up to the scratch 
where a man has failed, a small dog may play 
the hero when a big one quits. That was the 
case here. The smallest dog of the lot, “Jack,” 
came to the rescue. He was so small that he was 
not taken very seriously for his hauling power— 
but when it came to hunting, he was there with 
all four paws, and he was used as retriever when 
Dr. Grenfell went out with a gun. Here 
was a chance for him to show the stuff that was 
in his black, rough hide. 

“Jack!” said the Doctor. “Hist! Hist!” 
And he pointed to the other pan, and threw a 
piece of ice in that direction. 

“ Jack ” understood and instantly obeyed. In 
little more time than it takes to tell of it, his 
furry paws had taken his small body through 
and over the rotten mush. Since he was the 
lightest of the lot, he scarcely sank below the 
surface as he went. “ His frame was little but 
his soul was large.” 

When he got there he turned about, wagging 
his tail as a flag-signal, his tongue lolling out, 


ALONE ON THE ICE 


177 


his whole attitude seeming to say, “ Well, aren’t 
you pleased with me? ” 

“Lie down!” shouted Grenfell, and the dog 
at once obeyed—“ a little black fuzz ball on the 
white setting.” 

That was an object lesson to “ Brin ” and the 
other dog. The next time he threw them off 
they made directly for the other pan. It was a 
hard fight to get there, but they must have said 
to themselves: “What dog has done, dog can 
do. If that little fellow can turn the trick, so 
can we.” So they plashed and floundered 
through, their heads barely above the waves, and 
the salt spray in their eyes, till they had carried 
the lines across. The traces had been knotted 
securely under their bellies, so they could not 
come off when the Doctor pulled with the weight 
of his body against the lines. 

He took as much of a run as he could get in 
the few feet from side to side of the pan, and 
dived headlong into the “ slob.” It was a long, 
hard pull, but the lines held, and the dogs too, 
so that presently he found himself scrambling 
up beside them on the other pan where they were 
waiting with little “ Jack.” 


178 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

To his crushing disappointment, Dr. Grenfell 
found that the place where he now clung was if 
anything worse than the spot he had left. By 
this time all the other dogs but one poor fellow 
had made the distance, and were beside him, 
their eyes asking the piteous questions their 
tongues could not utter. 

“ What does this mean, master? What are you 
going to do with us now? Which is the way 
home? Why don’t we start? How soon are we 
going to have our suppers? ” 

The pan was sinking: it could not hold them 
all. They must get off it at the earliest possible 
moment. This pan was nearer the shore than 
the one they had left, but all the time an off¬ 
shore wind was shoving the entire ice-pack 
steadily out toward the open sea, so that, like the 
frog in the well, for every foot they gained they 
were losing two or three. All this time, Gren¬ 
fell was longing for a chance to swim ashore— 
and the dogs would have followed him in that. 
Grenfell doesn’t in the least mind a bath in icy 
waters. I remember one nipping day on the 
Strathcona I came out on deck to find that he 
had just been taking his bath in the open by 


ALONE ON THE ICE 


179 


emptying the bucket over himself in the biting 
wind. “ You could have had one too,” he said, 
“ but I’ve just lost the bucket overboard.” I 
wonder that he didn’t dive for it, as he dived for 
the cricket-ball on that earlier occasion. 

It was impossible to swim ashore from the pan 
—because there was that slushy “ sish ” filling 
all the gaps. The tiny table-top on which they 
were now crowded together measured about ten 
by twelve feet. It was not even solid ice—it 
was more like a great snowball loosely packed 
by the cold wind—and at any moment under the 
extra strain of the weight of men and dogs it 
might break up and let them all down into a 
watery grave. As the wind became more brisk 
and the sea grew rougher, the pan rocked about 
and bent and swayed, and the risk of its parting 
in the middle increased. 

The pan headed toward a rocky point, where 
heavy surf was breaking: and a hope sprang up 
in Grenfell’s heart that he might get near enough 
to swim ashore after all. But then the worst 
possible thing happened, short of an utter break¬ 
up. The pan hit a rock, and a large piece of it 
broke off. Then the rest of it swung round and 


180 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

the wind took hold of it, like a fiend alive, and 
started to push it steadily out to sea again. 

The sea has been compared to a cat, which in 
calm weather purrs at your feet and in a storm 
will reveal its true nature and crack your bones 
and eat you. Now it was cruelly teasing Gren¬ 
fell and his four-footed comrades as a cat 
tortures a mouse before it kills. The last hope 
seemed to have gone—unless someone by a 
miracle should pass along the shore and spy that 
tiny object on the horizon, and summon others 
to help him launch a boat to the rescue. 

But no one lives on the shore of that huge bay. 
The other sled by now was so far ahead that it 
would be a long time before those with it could 
come back to make a search, even after they felt 
sufficiently alarmed to do so. 

Cold and keen and marrow-searching, the 
brutal west wind—the worst of all in the spring 
of the year—moaned and whistled over the ice 
to the benumbed Doctor, and an additional ex¬ 
asperation was the fact that the komatik, from 
which he had been compelled to cut the dogs 
loose, had bobbed up to the surface again, and 
could now be seen not fifty yards away, but just 


ALONE ON THE ICE 


181 


as un-get-atable as if it were a mile off. There 
it stood to tantalize him, in the slush, and he 
knew that it had aboard everything he now 
wanted so acutely. There were dry clothes, 
wood and matches to make a signal fire, food and 
even a thermos bottle with hot tea! 

The slender hope of being seen from the shore 
diminished as Grenfell thought of how incon¬ 
spicuous he was, nearly naked, his dogs about 
him. Crusoe alone on his isle of solid ground 
was a king of space by comparison. Should he 
escape it would be the first time that a man 
adrift on the offshore ice had come ashore to tell 
the tale. Nearly anybody gazing seaward— 
even if anybody saw—would say: “Oh, that’s 
just a piece of kelp or a bush! ” The wiseacres 
refuse to be fooled by such sights. They are like 
the Arabs of the desert, who refuse to get excited 
over a mirage. 

That he might not freeze to death before he 
drowned, Grenfell cut off those long top boots 
down to their moccasin feet, split the legs, and 
managed to tie them together into a makeshift 
for a jacket which at least protected his back 
from the fiercest biting of the wind. 


182 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

Presently as Grenfell watched the widening 
interval between himself and the island he had 
left so comfortably a few hours before, he saw 
the komatik with its load up-end and vanish 
through the ice, as though it grew tired of wait¬ 
ing for him to make a try for it. The disappear¬ 
ance was one more sign of the general break-up 
of the ice on all sides of him, as his frail ice-pan 
neared the wide-open mouth of the bay. The 
white plain over which he had trudged from 
the island with the dogs had almost disappeared. 
The island was evidently surrounded on all sides 
by water and “ sish,” so that even if he could 
get back to it he would be cut off from the shore. 

There were eight dogs on the pan. Slowly, 
slowly he was making up his mind to the hardest 
of all decisions. It was a choice between his 
own life and the lives of some of the animals he 
loved so well. 


X 


A FIGHT WITH THE SEA 

No boat could come out from the shore 
through the sort of sea that was now running. 
The great pans of ice, rising and falling on the 
waves, were crashing and charging into the cliffs 
alongshore “ like medieval battering-rams,” and 
the white spray dashed high against the rocks 
with a sullen roar as of artillery. It would be 
necessary to skin some of the dogs and use their 
pelts for blankets, in order to escape freezing in 
the terrible cold of the oncoming night. 
Imagine how hard it was for their master to 
choose which should be slain! 

He had the sealskin traces wound about his 
waist, to keep the hungry animals from devour¬ 
ing them. He now undid them, and made a 
hangman’s noose. This he slipped over the 
head of one of the dogs. Then he threw the 
animal on his back, put his foot on his neck, and 
stabbed him to the heart. The struggling 


184 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

creature bit his master—a deep gash—in the leg, 
but Grenfell kept the knife in the dog till the 
poor beast lay still, that the blood might not 
spurt out and freeze on the skin. Two more 
animals were put to death in the same fashion, 
and one of them bit him again in the death 
throes. So violent was the battle that the 
Doctor fully expected the pan to break up as 
they fought, and let them all into the sea. 

With the strange indifference that “ huskies ” 
generally show to the fate of their fellows, the 
other dogs were licking their coats and trying to 
dry themselves. The Doctor had done his best 
to stifle the cries of the slain animals, for these 
would have roused them to a frenzy and led 
them to fall upon the under dog, and upon one 
another as well, and a general fight at such close 
quarters would have been disastrous. 

He found himself envying the dead dogs, and 
wondering whether, when they came to the open 
sea, it would not be better to use his knife on 
himself than to die, inch by agonizing inch, in 
the freezing water. 

When the dogs were skinned, and the harness 
had been used to lash the skins together, it was 


A FIGHT WITH THE SEA 185 

nearly dark, and they were fully ten miles out at 
sea. 

To the north he spied a solitary light, twin¬ 
kling from the village he had left in the morn¬ 
ing. He thought of the fishermen sitting down to 
their tea: and he knew they would not think of 
him as in danger, for he had told them he would 
not be back for three days. And all the 
“ liveyeres ” think of Grenfell as a man who 
knows the coast so well, and the ways of getting 
about, that he is far more likely to give help 
than to ask it of them. 

He had unraveled a small piece of rope, and 
soaked this in fat from the entrails of a dog, 
thinking he might make a torch of it. But his 
match-box, which he wore on a chain, had 
leaked. Fishermen will tell you how hard it is 
to find a match-box that will not let in water: I 
prize one I have carried a great many years, 
which seems to be waterproof. I wish Gren¬ 
fell had had it then. The matches were a pulp. 
Nevertheless Grenfell kept them, thinking that 
they might be dried and usable by morning. 
Every now and then, by a sort of mechanical 
instinct, the Doctor would rise to his full height 


186 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

and wave his hands toward the land, in the for¬ 
lorn hope of being seen through a powerful 
glass. 

There was nothing but his hands to wave. 
He dared not let his shirt fly as a flag: it would 
not do to take it off too long at any time, because 
of the piercing cold. 

Nor would it be safe to pile up snow from the 
pan to break the force of the wind, for the pan 
might give way if it were thinned out anywhere. 
So he placed the dog-skins in a pile, sat on them, 
and changed his clothes, wringing them out, and 
flapping them in the wind, then putting them by 
turns against his body. The exercise at least 
postponed the coming of the last hour of all. 

The moccasins let the water through so easily 
that it was impossible for him to dry his feet. 
Then he remembered a trick of the Lapps, who 
had been brought over to care for the reindeer 
which Grenfell was striving to introduce at St. 
Anthony in place of the dogs. The Lapps have 
a way of tying grass in pads about their feet. 
On the harness of the dogs there was flannel, to 
make it soft where it rubbed against the flanks. 
The Doctor cut off the flannel, raveled out the 


A FIGHT WITH THE SEA 187 

rest of the rope, stuffed his shoes with the frag¬ 
ments of rope, and wound the flannel about his 
legs like puttees. If the situation were not so 
serious, he might have laughed at the outfit in 
which he faced the night wind, for the Oxford 
University running trunks and the Richmond 
Football Club red, yellow and black stockings 
were garments he had worn twenty years before 
and had recently found in a box of old clothes. 

What was left over of the rope was stuffed 
inside the flannel shirt and the trunks, which 
with the stockings and sweater vest made up the 
Doctor’s complete costume. Then he made 
“ Doc,” his biggest dog, lie down, so that he 
might curl up beside him and use him as a kind 
of fireless stove. He wrapped the three skins 
round his body, and—strange to say—fell asleep. 
One hand kept warm against “ Doc’s ” hide, but 
the other froze,—since the Doctor had lost his 
gloves. Even so, Edward Whymper camping 
out on the volcano Cotopaxi in Ecuador found 
his tent too hot on the side next the volcano and 
too cold on the other side. 

Grenfell awoke, his teeth chattering and his 
body shivering. He thought for an instant he 


188 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

was looking at the sunrise, but it was the moon, 
and he guessed it must be about half an hour 
after midnight. “ Doc ” didn’t at all relish 
having his slumber disturbed. He was warm 
and comfortable, and he growled his remon¬ 
strance, deep down in his throat, till he dis¬ 
covered that it was his master and not another 
dog against his cushioned ribs. 

For a great mercy, the wind died down, and 
stopped pushing the ice-pan out into the dreaded 
North Atlantic. Just out yonder, not sixty feet 
away, was a cake of ice much bigger than his 
own. It would have made a fine raft for them 
all: and if only they could have reached it, 
Grenfell was sure he could have held out for two 
or three days. He could have killed off the dogs 
one by one, eaten the flesh, and drunk the warm 
blood. The Eskimo would think such a meal 
luxury. On his little pan, the effort to kill each 
dog would mean the risk of drowning every 
time. 

At daybreak, Grenfell remembered, men 
would be starting from Goose Cove with their 
sleds to go twenty miles to a parade of Orange¬ 
men. With this thought in his mind he fell 



A FIGHT WITH THE SEA 189 

asleep again. Then he woke with a sharp 
realization of the fact that he must have some 
kind of flag with which to signal them. He 
made up his mind that as soon as it was daylight 
he would use his shirt for a flag—but the pole 
was lacking. So in the dark he wrenched the 
bodies of the dead dogs apart—an extremely 
difficult task with the tough, frozen muscles and 
fibres. But he made what he says was “ the 
heaviest and crookedest flagpole it has ever been 
my lot to see,” lashing the bones together with 
his bits of rope and the remains of the seal traces. 

By this time he was almost starving, since he 
had not yet been able to bring himself to the 
point of devouring his comrades. His last meal 
had been porridge and bread and butter, nearly 
twenty-four hours before. Round one leg was a 
rubber band which had replaced a broken 
garter. He chewed on this constantly, and 
somehow it seemed to help him from being over¬ 
come with hunger and thirst. 

No more welcome sight—except that of men 
to the rescue—could there have been than the 
face of the rising sun. When he took off his 
shirt to run it up as a flag, he found that it was 


190 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

not so cold as it had been. His skeleton flag¬ 
pole as he tried to wave it bent and buckled— 
but he found that by means of it he could raise 
his shirt-flag three or four feet over his head, and 
the least additional height meant much to his 
slim chance of being spied from the shore. 

The wind, too, had been carrying him back 
toward the shore, at a rugged point called Ire¬ 
land Head. Unhappily for the man at sea, the 
little fishing-village there was deserted in 
winter: the people had shifted, bag and baggage, 
to another settlement where they could get teach¬ 
ing for their children and see more of other 
people. 

Now it settled down to a severe endurance test. 
If Grenfell had been fresh with comfortable 
sleep, and well-fed, it might not have been so 
serious a business to keep that gruesome “ flag ” 
of his waving aloft to attract the keen eye of 
someone ashore. But as it was, he must keep 
the terribly heavy banner of dog-pelts swinging 
to and fro with his strength at a low ebb, and 
hope barely alive in his heart. Again, his 
imagination began to play cruel tricks with him. 
He thought he saw men moving: but they were 


A FIGHT WITH THE SEA 191 

trees blown by the wind. Then to his joy it 
seemed that a boat was approaching: he thought 
he saw it rising and falling on the waves, as the 
oars drove it onward. He wanted the boat to 
come so much that the wish was father to the 
thought. Instead—it was only the glitter of the 
sun on a block of ice bobbing up and down. 

Whenever the Doctor sat down to rest, faith¬ 
ful old “ Doc ” would lick his face, and then 
roam about the ice-pan, coming back again and 
again to where the Doctor sat, his eyes and his 
ears asking: “Well, why aren’t we starting? 
What is the matter? Isn’t it time to be under 
way? ” On a sunny day on the trail amid ice 
and snow the “ husky ” seeks some good reason 
for not being in the traces, tugging and hauling 
with his mates. The other dogs, following his 
example, were roaming about, and sometimes 
they would bite at the bodies of the slain dogs, 
wondering, no doubt, how soon their master 
would hand out to them the square meal of fish 
or seal-meat to which they were accustomed. 

For his own midday meal, Grenfell had be¬ 
gun to plan another killing—that of one of the 
bigger dogs, whose blood he would drink. 


192 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

Nansen had to do the same thing, according to 
the story told in his book “ Farthest North,” 
which Grenfell had been reading only a few 
days before. It might be a hard battle to con¬ 
quer one of the big dogs, as he himself grew 
weaker. But fear had not once entered the 
Doctor’s mind. His uppermost sensation now 
was a desire to sleep—and if death came after 
that, it would only be the answer to a question 
he had many times asked himself. 

He looked at the precious matches, to see if 
they were dry. The heads were a paste, except 
the blue tips of three or four wax matches. If 
the latter could be dried, they might be used. 
Once I gave Dr. Grenfell a bottle of the same 
kind of matches, and he said: “ I’d rather have 
those than a five-dollar bill.” If no air is stir¬ 
ring they will burn with a tall, strong flame 
for a minute or more, clean down to the bot¬ 
tom. 

He laid the matches out to dry, and looked 
about for a piece of transparent ice which would 
do for a burning glass. With the tow he had 
stuffed into his leggings, and the fat from the 
slain dogs, he thought he could produce a plume 


A FIGHT WITH THE SEA 193 

of smoke to be seen from the land, if he could 
get a light. He found a piece of ice which he 
thought would serve his purpose, and was just 
about to wave his “ flag ” again when he saw 
something that made his heart stand, still for an 
instant. 

Was it—could it be—the glitter of an oar- 
blade rising and falling? 

But no—it could not be. It was not clear 
water, but the “ slob ice,” probably too heavy 
for a rowboat to pierce, which lay between the 
pan and the beach. There had been no smoke- 
signal from the land, no gun discharged, no fire 
kindled: one of these things would be sure to 
happen, had anybody caught sight of him or of 
the unwieldy banner that he had raised aloft so 
many times. 

By this time Grenfell was partly snow-blind, 
for he had lost his dark glasses. As he raised 
his “ flag ” again, however, it seemed to him that 
the glitter was more distinct. It seemed to be 
coming nearer. With his hopes now mounting, 
he lifted the skins as high as he could, and waved 
with all his might. Now he could see not only a 
white oar-blade, but a black hull. If the pan 


194 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 
would hold together an hour more, his rescue 
was assured. 

Queer tricks the mind of a man will play at 
such a time. Our boys in the war thought so 
much of saving helmets, pistols and belt-buckles 
from the battlefields that it has been said the war 
was fought for souvenirs. Even in the hospital 
where they lay suffering with the most dreadful 
wounds, they were more anxious for those pre¬ 
cious relics than they were for their own re¬ 
covery. 

And so, coming back out of the jaws of icy 
death, Grenfell was thinking: “ I wonder what 
trophies I can save, to take home and put up in 
my study.” He had a picture in his mind’s eye 
of the dog-bone flagstaff, hanging over the big 
fireplace in the living-room at St. Anthony. 
(Later, the dogs “ beat him to it,” and devoured 
the bones with relish, as a child would eat 
candy.) Then he thought how picturesque 
those queer puttees would look, hanging on the 
wall with snowshoes and lynx-skins. The 
“ burning-glass ” was forgotten where it lay. 
As a reception-committee of one, rehearsing the 
speech of welcome, Grenfell roamed to and fro, 


A FIGHT WITH THE SEA 


195 


with the restlessness of a caged leopard in the 
Zoo at feeding-time. They couldn’t very well 
miss him now—but he could remember harrow¬ 
ing tales he had read when he was a boy, of a man 
on a desert island who scanned the horizon many 
days for a sail. Then a ship came along, missed 
the frantic watcher, and sailed away, leaving 
him to utter despair. He did not intend that 
this should happen to him now. To his delight, 
he could see that the rescuers by this time were 
waving back, in answer to his signals. Presently 
he could hear them shouting: “Don’t get ex¬ 
cited! Keep on the pan where you are! ” 

They were far more excited than he was: for 
it now seemed as natural to Grenfell to be saved 
as, a little while before, it had seemed to perish 
where so many good men had been swallowed 
up before him as they went to their business in 
great waters. Nearer and nearer they came, 
plying the oars valiantly, till the snub nose of the 
boat was thrust into the soft edge of the pan, as 
a dog’s muzzle is thrust into a man’s hand. 

The man in the bow jumped from the boat and 
took both of the Doctor’s hands. Neither said 
a word. At such moments men do not care 


196 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

much to speak. You remember how Stanley 
hunted Africa for Livingstone, and in the thrill¬ 
ing moment when at last the two men came 
together Stanley simply walked up to the mis¬ 
sionary, put out his hand, and said: “ Dr. 
Livingstone, I presume? ” 

But the tears rolled down the cheeks of the 
honest fisherman, despite his silence. 

The boatmen had brought a bottle of warm 
tea, and one can imagine how much good it did 
Grenfell after going without food and drink so 
long a time. The dogs were put in the boat, 
and strong arms drove the vessel shoreward. 
Five big, stalwart Newfoundlanders were at the 
oars,—all of them devoted to the Doctor, and 
rejoicing that they had come in time to save 
him. How often, in a dark hour, he had proved 
himself their friend! He had turned out in the 
dead of night to help them and their families: 
they knew he was on his way to aid one of their 
number now. There was nothing they would 
not do for him: it would be a small return for 
all he had done to earn their gratitude already. 

It wasn’t all plain rowing, by any means. 
Now and then the boat would get jammed in the 


A FIGHT WITH THE SEA 


197 


ice-pack so that they all must clamber out and 
lift the stout vessel over the pans. Sometimes 
men had to stand in the bows and force the pans 
apart, using their oars after the fashion of crow¬ 
bars. For a long time as they fought onward 
very little was said. They were saving their 
breath for their work. But as they rested on 
their oars and mopped their brows with their 
tattered sleeves, Grenfell asked: “ How under 
the sun did you happen to be out in the ice in 
this boat? ” 

They said that on the night before four men 
had gone out on a headland to get some harp 
seals which they had left to freeze there during 
the winter. As they were starting home, one of 
them thought he saw an ice-pan with something 
on it, drifting out to sea. When they got back 
to the village, and told their neighbors, the latter 
said it must be just the top of a tree. There was 
one man in the village who had a good spy-glass. 

He left his supper instantly, and ran out to the 
edge of the cliffs. Yes, he said, there was a man 
out yonder on the ice. He could see him wave 
his arms—and he declared it must be the Doctor, 
who had started out that morning. 


198 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

Even though night was falling, and the wind 
was coming on, they wanted to launch a boat, 
but it would have been no use: and they decided 
to wait until morning. The sea was taking up 
the blocks of ice and hurling them on the beach, 
just as it used to throw the little fishing-smacks 
over the sea-wall at Grenfell’s boyhood home. 

Messengers went up and down the coast: look¬ 
outs were stationed: many were watching, and 
some were weeping, all the while that Grenfell 
thought nobody saw him and that he was waving 
in vain. 

Before daybreak, these five volunteers had 
manned the boat. They took an awful risk in 
such seething waters. Just a little while before, 
a fisherman’s wife said good-by to her husband 
and three sons when they started to row out 
toward a ship that was signaling with flags for a 
pilot. All four were drowned in spite of their 
cool and skilful seamanship. 

The people had come from far and near to 
see the landing. They rushed into the surf to be 
the first to shake the Doctor’s hands. They 
seized them and shook them so heartily that he 
did not find out till later that they had been 



Who Said “Halt 









A FIGHT WITH THE SEA 199 

badly frost-bitten. It was not a pretty object the 
villagers greeted. Says the Doctor: “I must 
have been a weird sight as I stepped ashore, tied 
up in rags, stuffed out with oakum, wrapped in 
the bloody skins of dogs, with no hat, coat, or 
gloves besides, and only a pair of short knickers. 
It must have seemed to some as if it were the old 
man of the sea coming ashore.” 

Copious draughts of hot tea, and almost 
equally liquid Irish stew went to the right spot. 
Grenfell as a veteran was wise enough not to eat 
too much all at once. That is the danger, after 
one has been without food so long. 

They dressed Grenfell in the warm clothes 
fishermen wear, and hauled him back to the St. 
Anthony hospital. That ride was no fun at all. 
The jolting racked his weary bones and his feet 
were so frozen that he could not walk. There, 
two days later, they brought to him the boy on 
whom he was to have operated at his own home. 
The operation was a complete success. 

The other dogs lived long and pulled the 
Doctor many leagues on errands of mercy: but 
he mourned the loss of the three who perished 
that he might survive. I have seen on the glass- 


200 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

enclosed veranda of the Doctor’s home at St. 
Anthony the brass tablet with its inscription: 

TO THE MEMORY OF 
Three Noble Dogs 
MOODY 
WATCH 
SPY 

Whose Lives Were Given 
For Mine on the Ice 
April 21 st y 1908 
Wilfred Grenfell 
St. Anthony 

The men who came to the rescue wanted no 
reward. To have the Doctor back in their midst 
again was all they desired. But the Doctor in¬ 
sisted on giving them tokens of his gratitude. 
As George Andrews said: 

“ ’ E sent us watches, an’ spy-glasses, an’ pic¬ 
tures o’ himself made large an’ in a frame. 
George Read an’ me ’ad th’ watches an’ th’ 
others ’ad th’ spy-glasses. ’Eere’s th’ watch. 
It ’as 1 In memory o’ April 21st’ on it, but us 
don t need th’ things to make we remember it, 
though we’re wonderful glad t’ ’ave ’em from th’ 
Doctor.” 


XI 


THE KIDNAPPERS 

ONE day, as Grenfell was about to leave 
northern Labrador in his little steamer the 
Strathcona, a man came aboard with trouble in 
his eyes. It was the good-hearted Hudson’s 
Bay agent. 

“ Doctor,” he pleaded, “ old Tommy Mitch¬ 
ell’s been cornin’ in every Saturday for two 
months, tryin’ to get somethin’ for his family. 
I’ve been givin’ him twenty pounds of flour a 
week for himself and wife and six children. 
That’s every shred they’ve got to live on. He 
hasn’t a salmon or a codfish to give me, and he 
was in debt when I came here. What’ll we 
do?” 

The Strathcona had steam up and was whis¬ 
tling to the Doctor to come aboard. On the 
Labrador coast you must leave promptly or the 
sea may punish you for the delay. 

11 See if you can’t stop at the island off Na- 
paktok Point, Doctor. They’re livin’ out there 


202 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 
with nothin’ but their own hats to cover ’em—if 
they’ve got any.” 

“ I will,” the Doctor promised, and was off. 

When they came near the island, the dory was 
lowered, and Grenfell and his mate rowed 
toward the rocks. 

“ Can you see anything that looks like a house, 
Bill? You have better eyes than mine.” 

“ No, Doctor. I been a-lookin’. I sees— 
nothing.” 

“ I didn’t expect you to do as well as that,” 
said the Doctor. “ But keep on looking. And 
call out when you see anything.” 

They rowed almost round the island, against 
a stiff head wind. 

Each time they passed cove or headland they 
thought, “Well now, surely it must be just 
around the next point.” 

“There’s a smoke, sir!” cried the sharp-eyed 
Bill. 

Sure enough—there was a tiny wisp of smoke, 
trickling up the face of the rocks. 

But no hut was to be seen. 

They landed, and pulled the boat out on the 
beach. 


THE KIDNAPPERS 203 

Then they went toward the smoke. The fire 
was built among flat stones out in the open. 

A hollow-cheeked woman sat with a poor, 
scrawny scrap of a baby on her arm. In her 
other hand she held what looked like an old 
paint can, and she was stirring some thin sort 
of gruel in it, in spite of the weight of the baby 
on her arm. It was not heavy, poor little crea¬ 
ture! 

“ Good-morning. Where’s your tent? ” Gren¬ 
fell asked, cheerily. 

“ There she is.” 

The woman pointed with the gruel stick to a 
mass of canvas and matting, plastered in patches 
with mud against the face of the cliff. 

11 Why do you cook in the open? ” 

“ ’Cos us hasn’t got no stove.” 

“Where’s Tom?” 

“ He’s away. He’s gone off wid Johnnie, 
tryin’ to shoot a gull. Here, Bill, run an’ 
fetch yer dad, an’ tell him Dr. Grenfell wants 
’un.” 

A half-naked little boy about nine years old 
darted off into the scrub bushes. 

“What’s the matter with baby?” Dr. Gren- 


204 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

fell inquired kindly, as the infant clasped his 
finger and looked up into his mild face. 

“ Hungry,” was the mother’s sufficient answer. 
“ I ain’t got nothin’ to give him.” Her lip 
trembled, and she turned her head away. 

The baby kept up a constant whimpering, like 
a lamb very badly scared. 

“ It’s half-starved,” said the Doctor. “ What 
do you give it? ” 

“ Flour, and berries,” was the response. “ I 
chews the loaf first—or else it ain’t no good for 
him.” 

Then a little girl, of perhaps five, and a boy 
of—maybe—seven, shyly came from behind the 
tent, where they had fled wild-eyed and hid 
when the strangers came. They had nothing 
on: but they were brown as chestnuts and fat as 
butter. 

It was snowing, and the snow had driven them 
toward the poor, mean fire where mother sat 
with the baby. 

“ Glad to see the other children are fat,” said 
the Doctor. 

“ They bees eatin’ berries all the time,” was 
the mother’s answer. Then suddenly the full 


THE KIDNAPPERS 


205 


force of their plight swept all other thoughts 
out of her mind. 

“ What’s t’ good of t’ government? ” she cried. 
“ Here is we all starvin’. And it’s ne’er a crust 
they gives yer. There bees a sight o’ pork an’ 
butter in t’ company’s store. But it’s ne’er a 
sight of ’im us ever gets. What are them doin’? 
T’ agent he says he can’t give Tom no more’n 
dry flour, an’ us can’t live on dat.” 

Then a bent and weary figure shuffled on the 
scene. It was Tom, the poor husband and 
father. He had an old and rusty, single- 
barreled muzzle-loading gun, and he was carry¬ 
ing a dead sea-gull by the tip of one of its wings. 
Two small boys trudged along after him, their 
faces old before their time. They stood looking 
at the Doctor in wonderment. 

“Well, Tom, you’ve had luck!” was Gren¬ 
fell’s greeting. He explains that he meant Tom 
was very lucky not to have the gun open at the 
wrong end and discharge its contents into his 
face! 

“It’s only a kitty,” the hunter answered, 
sadly. “ An’ I been sittin’ out yonder on the 
p’int all day.” A kitty is a little gull. 


206 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

“ Your gun isn’t heavy enough to kill the big 
gulls, I suppose.” 

“ No, Doctor. I hain’t much powder—and 
ne’er a bit o’ shot. I has to load her up most 
times with a handful o’ they round stones. T’ 
hammer don’t always set her off, neither. Her 
springs bees too old, I reckon.” He fumbled 
with the trigger in a way that led Grenfell to ask 
him to let him hold the gun instead. Tom 
passed it over, and Grenfell held it till their talk 
was over. 

Tom, who was part Eskimo, was a very poor 
business man. He had been a slave of the 
“ truck system ” by which a man brings his furs 
or his fish to a trader, exchanges them for sup¬ 
plies, and is always in debt to the storekeeper 
who takes pains to see that it shall be so. 

“ Tom,” the Doctor told him, “ I want to help 
you. Winter is coming on, and here you are 
with a handful of flour and a sea-gull, and no 
proper shelter from the cold. You have too 
many children to keep. I think you’d better 
pass over to me for a while your two little boys, 
'Billy’ and 'Jimmy,’ and the little girl. I’ll 
feed them and clothe them and have them taught 


THE KIDNAPPERS 


207 


till they are big enough to come back and help 
you. All the time they are with me I’ll do all 
I can to help you along. If you have them here 
—they’ll certainly starve. The snow is begin¬ 
ning to cover up the berries already. And that’s 
about all you’ve got to feed them.” 

Poor Tom couldn’t think. 

He merely stood there, looking first at the sea, 
then at the sky, then at the Doctor, his mouth 
wide open. 

His wife broke the silence. “ D’ye hear, 
man? T’ Doctor wants to take t’ children. I 
says ’tis the gover’ment should feed ’em here. 
I wouldn’t let no children o’ mine go, I 
wouldn’t.” Saying which, she held her sickly 
infant tighter. 

The talk to and fro went on for a long time. 
It didn’t get much of anywhere. On the part 
of the fond parents it consisted largely of what 
the government ought to do. Grenfell patiently 
explained that the government was a long way 
off, and couldn’t answer before Christmas if it 
answered at all. 

All this time Father Tom stood there, dumb 
as a stalled ox, trying to see daylight by which to 


208 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 
make up his mind. Evidently his wife was the 
real man of the family. 

“Why doesn’t youse say something?” she 
broke out at last. “ Bees you a-goin’ to let t’ 
Doctor have youse childer? ” 

Tom looked more distracted than ever, and it 
didn’t help much when he took off his hat and let 
cold air blow on his heated brain as he rum¬ 
maged with his finger in the dense thatch on his 
head. 

Then Tom said: “ I suppose he knows.” 

“Yes,” Dr. Grenfell said. “I think you’d 
better let me have Billy and Jimmy for a while.” 

There was more talk, and finally the wife gave 
way. “ Well, youse can take Billy, I suppose, 
if you wants un.” 

All this time the mate had said nothing. Big 
and burly as he was, there were tears in his eyes; 
he had a kind heart, for there were many little 
ones to feed and clothe in his own household. 
He thought it was time to settle the dispute. 

For he heard the Strathcona!s whistle blowing 
impatiently, warning the men ashore that the 
sea was rising and the rocks in the uncertain 
weather meant danger. The little steamer, 


THE KIDNAPPERS 209 

while the palaver went on, had been following 
alongshore as they went round the island. The 
snow was getting thicker, and the wind was 
tipping the waves with whitecaps. They must 
be off without further parley. 

So the mate, not wasting words, suddenly 
grabbed Billy under one long, strong arm. 

Billy kicked and howled and struggled. Billy 
had no idea of that delightful home for the 
children at St. Anthony. He would have cried 
to go there, if he had known what playmates he 
would have, what diverting games to play. 

Billy was captured “ for good and all.” But 
Dr. Grenfell knew that it wouldn’t do for Billy 
to be toted off alone. 

He was bound he’d get another child,—for 
he knew he was right, not merely because of the 
good he could do the children, but because of 
the hopeless situation of the whole family if they 
all remained on this miserable shelf of rock in 
the open Atlantic. 

“Now, Mrs. Mitchell,” he coaxed, “you’re 
going to let Jimmy come too, to keep Billy 
company.” 

She shook her head in defiance. Her mind 


210 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 
was made up. Billy could go—but he was the 
only one. That was flat and final. 

Then Tom broke his silence once more: “I 
says he knows what’s for t’ best.” 

The Strathcona!s whistle was petulantly cry¬ 
ing: “Come on! We really must be starting! 
If you don’t come aboard right away, we may 
be wrecked. Really, you must think of your 
crew. It isn’t fair to let us run this risk, with 
the barometer falling, and the wind like this.” 

Dr. Grenfell made every tempting promise he 
could think of. 

“ If you’ll let me have Jimmy, I’ll give your 
husband a fine gun.” 

“No,” said Mrs. Mitchell. “Ye can’t have 
un.” 

“ I’ll send him plenty of powder and shot.” 

She shook her head. 

“ I’ll give him a letter to the agent so he can 
get work.” 

She made an impatient gesture of rejection 
with her free hand. 

The Doctor played a trump card. “You 
shall have nice dresses for yourself and clothes 
for all the children.” 



THE KIDNAPPERS 


211 


Mrs. Mitchell yielded. “ Well then, ye can 
have Jimmy. But that’s all. That’s the very 
last one.” 

“Now, Mrs. Mitchell, be reasonable. Let 
me have the baby girl, too.” 

“ No.” 

“ Look at your tent. We’ll put the little girl 
in a fine house with a roof on it, and a door that 
opens and shuts.” 

“ No.” 

“ We’ll give her pretty clothes, and teach her 
from the picture books. She’ll come back so 
you won’t know her.” 

“ But I want to know her.” 

“ We’ll feed her well, and fill her up till she’s 
as fat as a seal.” 

“ No. That’s all. Jimmy and Billy can go. 
She shall stay here with me.” 

This time the father kept his face tight closed. 
There was no help at all from him. He looked 
the other way, stiff as a seal-gaff. 

The mate was already on his way to the beach, 
with the two naked little boys wriggling under 
his arms. They were red and blue all over with 
the stains of the berries—a beautiful sight. 


212 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

“All right, Mrs. Mitchell. We must go on 
board now. Come with us, and we’ll give you 
the things.” 

Then there was joy for that poor, hungry 
family. 

They were all clad in stout clothing that would 
keep out the wind. A gun was lent to the 
father, and his shattered fowling-piece was 
fixed up by the clever engineer, till it was “ most 
as good as new.” The eldest boy, John, would 
be big enough to use it. 

The powder and shot were dug out of the 
lockers: tins of condensed milk were found for 
the poor little shrimp of a baby. The second 
axe—a gorgeous prize—went into the growing 
pile of gifts: soap, needles and thread, shoes and 
stockings, potatoes, some flour, a package of tea, 
sugar, and other precious things went into two 
oilskin bags, and then over the rail into the 
Mitchells’ leaky, tossing boat. 

Meanwhile an astonishing change was taking 
place in the two boys. They were getting a bath 
on the deck, in the wind and snow, with a bucket 
and a scrubbing-brush, and after they were 
dressed they had their hair cut. Their mother 


THE KIDNAPPERS 213 

stared and stared as the boat rowed away. She 
could hardly believe they were hers. 

“ Good-by, Doctor. Thank you.” 

“ Good-by, Mrs. Mitchell. We’ll take good 
care of them.” 

Father said nothing. He was rowing the 
boat. But no doubt he was thinking very grate¬ 
ful thoughts. 

The boys wept a little, silently as they looked 
their last on their patched and tattered home. 
The family they left behind them would make a 
journey of a hundred miles in that rotten boat 
to a winter hut on the mainland. 

But they looked at each other, washed and 
dressed, with all that wild hair pruned away— 
and then they began to laugh at each other as 
the biggest joke in their short lives. 

After they reached St. Anthony and were in¬ 
stalled in the Orphanage, they were two of the 
happiest and most popular lads in the place. 

They purred like pleased kittens and lost no 
chance to show how much they liked the people 
who were doing so much for them. They 
studied hard, and put the same driving spirit 
into play. It could be seen that the little 


214 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

“ heathen ” of the island were in a fair way to 
become in time the leaders of men who are 
needed in all walks of life. Dr. Grenfell 
felt well rewarded for all the trouble he had 
taken for Jimmy and Billy and all their fam- 
ily. 

The “ liveyeres,” as those who “ live here ” 
are called, may lead rough, hard lives. But for 
that very reason they welcome books, and music, 
and all such things. 

One day as the Strathcona was scudding south¬ 
ward, her sails swelling with a stiff breeze, and 
the Doctor in a great hurry to reach a distant 
coast-line and get to work on some patients who 
had been waiting a long time for him, a little 
boat came and planted herself directly in the 
i Strathcona’s path. 

The Strathcona was a small craft herself, but 
she seemed a monster compared with this im¬ 
pudent sailboat. The smaller boat had a funny¬ 
looking flag, hoisted as a signal to stop. It was 
almost as if a harbor tug should attempt to hold 
up the Leviathan. 

Dr. Grenfell thought it must be some very 
serious surgical case. 


THE KIDNAPPERS 


215 


He gave the order at once: “ Down sail and 
heave her to.” 

Then an old, white-haired man, the only 
passenger in the small boat, climbed stiffly over 
the rail, fairly creaking in his joints. 

“ Good-day,” said Grenfell. “ What can we 
do for you? We’re in a hurry.” 

The old man took off his cap, and held it in 
his hand as he looked down at the deck. Then 
he mustered up courage to make his request. 

“ Please, Doctor,” he said slowly, “ I wanted 
to ask you if you had any books you could lend 
me. We haven’t anything to read here.” 

Dr. Grenfell confesses with shame that his 
first impulse was to return a sharp, vexed answer, 
and to ask, “ What do you mean by holding up 
my mission boat for such a reason? ” But then 
he realized his mistake. In a way, it would be 
as good a deed to put a prop under the old man’s 
spirit with a good book as to take off his leg with 
a knife. 

“ Haven’t you got any books? ” 

“ Yes, Doctor. I’ve got two, but I’ve read 
’em through, over and over again, long ago.” 

11 What were they? ” 


216 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

“ One is the Works of Josephus, sir, and the 
other is Plutarch’s Lives.” 

The old fellow was overjoyed when the 
Doctor put aboard his bobbing skiff a box of 
fifty books—a mixture of everything from 
Henty’s stories to sermons. 

Dr. Grenfell never could tell what a day—or 
a night—would bring forth. If variety is the 
spice of life, his life in the north has been one 
long diet of paprika. 

Once late in the fall he was creeping along 
the Straits of Belle Isle in a motor-boat—the 
only one in those waters at that time. 

It broke down, as the best of motor-boats 
sometimes will, and the tidal current, with that 
brutal habit which tidal currents have, began to 
pull the boat on the rocks as with an unseen 
hand. 

They tied all the lines they had together, at¬ 
tached the anchor, and put it overboard. 

The water was so deep they could not reach 
the bottom. 

Darkness was shutting down—and it was an 
awful place to pass the night. 

Then a schooner’s lights flashed out. “ Hur- 


THE KIDNAPPERS 


217 


rah!” cried Grenfell’s men. “We’re all right 
now! ” 

They lashed the hurricane light on their boat¬ 
hook and waved it to and fro like mad. They 
MUST make those fellows on the schooner take 
notice and stop for them. The sea would prob¬ 
ably get them if they failed. 

The water was so rough, the night so dark, 
that even their precious motor-boat was nothing, 
if only they could clamber aboard that schooner. 
At almost any time, those Straits offer stretches 
of the most perilous sailing-water in the world. 
Sailors who have rounded Cape Horn would say 
yes to that. 

But just then—to their horror, the schooner 
which had been close to them put about and 
hurried off like a startled caribou. Soon the 
powerless motor-boat was left far, far behind, 
wallowing in the trough of waves much too big 
for her size. 

They shouted with all their might, but the 
whistling wind threw away their outcry in¬ 
stead of carrying it across the tossing waves, 
which threatened to swamp the boat at any in¬ 
stant. 


218 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

They shot off their guns. 

They yelled again. 

They lit flares such as are used in the navy for 
signal lights. 

But it was all in vain. 

They almost began to believe they had 
dreamed of rescue—that a phantom ship had 
come to them in a nightmare. 

They waved their hurricane light again and 
again, as high as they could hold it. 

The engineer, a willing amateur, all this while 
had been toiling away till his hands bled, at his 
motor, drenched with the spray. He had torn 
the machinery limb from limb, and patiently 
refitted the parts. Suddenly one cylinder gave 
a weak kick, and then came a spasmodic succes¬ 
sion of sputters, with long waits between. But 
with the aid of the oars the boat was now able 
to make slow and tedious progress in the 
schooner’s wake. 

At last—at last—along toward midnight they 
crept into the harbor where the schooner had 
also taken refuge. 

Tired as they were, they wouldn’t turn in at a 
fisherman’s cottage without boarding the ship to 


THE KIDNAPPERS 219 

rebuke the sailors for their unhandsome be¬ 
havior. 

How could they leave men in a tiny boat in 
distress, perhaps to be swamped and to drown 
in those cruel waters out yonder in the blind 
dark? 

The skipper made solemn reply. “ Them 
cliffs is haunted,” he announced. “ More’n one 
light’s been seen there than ever any man lit. 
When us saw youse light flashing round right 
in on the cliffs, us knowed it was no place for 
Christian men that time o’ night. Us guessed it 
was just fairies or devils tryin’ to toll us in.” 

Many of the little boats on the Labrador are 
not fit to spend a night at sea, and often it is an 
anxious business to get into a safe harbor before 
sundown. Dr. Grenfell has a reputation as a 
daredevil skipper, because so often, on an errand 
of mercy, he has steamed right out in the teeth 
of the storm when hardened, ancient mariners 
shook their heads and hugged the land. But the 
Doctor does not take chances for the sake of the 
risk itself—his daring always has behind it the 
good reason that he wants to go somewhere in a 
great hurry in time of need. 


220 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

A hundred miles north of Indian Tickle, 
where there was no light, Grenfell was caught 
one night when he was coming south with the 
fishing fleet. 

All of a sudden the fog fell on the whole 
group of ships like a thick wet blanket, before 
they could make the harbor. There were many 
reefs between their position and the open sea: 
the only thing to do was to anchor then and 
there. When a rift came in the fog, Dr. Gren¬ 
fell saw the riding-lights of eleven vessels round 
about him. A northeaster grew in violence as 
night came swiftly on, and a heavy sea arose. 
The ships tugged at their anchors. The great 
waves swept the decks from end to end. 

In the hold of the Strathcona were patients 
lying in the cots, on their way to Battle Harbor 
Hospital. As the Doctor would say, there was 
less than an inch of iron between them and 
eternity. 

They were dressed, and the boats were pre¬ 
pared to take them ashore. 

One after another in the mad waters the 
neighbor lights went out. All night the Strath¬ 
cona fought the sea. When day came, only one 



THE KIDNAPPERS 221 

of the other boats was left—a ship much bigger 
than the Strathcona, named the Yosemite . 

The Yosemite was drifting down upon the 
smaller vessel, and it seemed as if in a moment 
more there must be a collision. 

But just then the Yosemite struck a reef. She 
turned over on her side. In that position the sea 
drove the vessel ashore, through the breakers, 
with the crew clinging to the bridge. 

The fact that the Strathcona kept steam up 
and was “ steaming to her anchors ” all night 
long had saved her, the only survivor of the 
entire fleet. Every vessel that went ashore was 
smashed to kindling. 

As they were about to weigh anchor, the main 
steam pipe began to leak. It was necessary to 
“ blow down ” the boilers. 

For the whole of that short day the engineers 
tinkered at the damage, knowing that the lives 
of all on board might depend on their success 
ere nightfall. 

Suddenly, to the inexpressible relief of every¬ 
one, the engineer shouted: 

41 Right for’ard!” 

Then came the sweet music of the engine- 


222 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 
room bell, and presently they were under way 
again, so nightfall found them safe at last in the 
harbor, with those eleven wrecks pounding on 
the rocks outside. 

Sometimes the fishermen expected miracles of 
healing. One day a big “ husk ” of a fisherman 
clambered aboard, saying that his teeth hurt 
him. 

“ Sit down on that wood-pile,” said the 
Doctor. 

The man obeyed. The Doctor pried his 
mouth open, and saw the tooth that was making 
the trouble. Then he fetched the forceps. 

Up started the patient in wide-eyed alarm. 

“ Bees you a-goin’ to haul it, Doctor? ” 

“ Of course I’m going to pull it out. What 
did you want me to do? ” 

“ I wouldn’t have you touch it! Not for all 
the fish in the sea! ” 

“Well then, why did you come to me? 
You’re just wasting my time.” 

“ I wanted you to charm her, Doctor.” 

“ But my dear fellow, I’m not an Eskimo 
medicine-man. I don’t know how, and I don’t 
believe in it anyway.” 


THE KIDNAPPERS 


223 


Mr. Fisherman looked very much put out. 
“ I knows why youse won’t charm un. It’s be¬ 
cause I’m a Roman Catholic.” 

“ Nonsense. That wouldn’t make the slight¬ 
est difference. But if you really think it would 
do any good,—come on, I’ll try. Only—you’ll 
have to pay twenty-five cents, just as though I 
had ‘ hauled ’ it.” 

“ That I will, Doctor, and glad to do it. Go 
ahead!” 

He perched on the rail like a great sea-bird. 
The Doctor to carry out the farce put his finger 
in the gaping mouth and touched the tooth. 
While he kept his finger in place he uttered the 
solemn words: 

“ Abracadabra Tiddlywinkum Umslopoga.” 

That last word must have come from a hazy 
memory of the name of the wonderful big black 
man in H. Rider Haggard’s “ Alan Quater- 
main,” who after a long, hard run beside a 
horse that carries his master, defends a stair¬ 
way against their enemies and splits a magic 
stone with an axe and so brings the foe to 
grief. 

At any rate, the combination worked. Gren- 


224 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 
fell pulled out his finger quickly so that his 
patient wouldn’t bite him. 

The fisherman got up in silence. Then he 
slowly made the circuit of the deck. In the 
course of the brief journey, he thrust his hand 
deep into his jeans and pulled out a quarter. 

“ Thank you, Doctor. Many thanks.” He 
solemnly handed the coin to his benefactor. 
“ All the pain has gone.” 

Dr. Grenfell stood holding the coin in his 
hand, wondering how he came to make such a 
fool of himself, while the fisherman’s broad back 
bent to the oars of the little boat that took him 
ashore. 

A month later, in the same harbor, the same 
man swung his leg over the rail with a hearty 
greeting. 

“ Had any more trouble? ” asked the Doctor. 

“No—sir! Not an ache out of her since!” 
came the jovial answer. 

The Doctor had much trouble with patients 
who wanted to drink at one draught all the 
medicine he gave them. They thought that if 
a teaspoonful of the remedy was good for you, 
the whole bottle must be ever so much better. 


THE KIDNAPPERS 


225 


A haddock’s fin-bone was a “ liveyere’s ” 
charm against rheumatism—but you must get 
hold of the haddock and cut off the fin before he 
touches the boat. So you don’t often get a fin 
that is good for anything. 

If you want to avoid a hemorrhage, the best 
plan is to tie a bit of green worsted round your 
wrist. 

Both Protestants and Catholics write prayers 
on pieces of paper and wear them in little bags 
about their necks to drive off evil things. 

The constant battle against wind and wave 
develops heroes and heroines, and the tales told 
of golden deeds such as might earn a Carnegie 
medal or pension are beyond number. 

One man started south for the winter in his 
fishing-boat, with his fishing partner, his wife, 
four children and a servant girl. A gale of 
wind came up. On the Labrador a gale is a 
gale: they do not use the word lightly. Gren¬ 
fell tells of a new church that was blown into the 
sea with its pulpit, pews and communion-table. 
In a storm like that, the mainsail, jib and mast 
of this luckless smack went over the side. The 
boat was driven helplessly before the wind, for 


226 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

three days and nights. Then the wind changed, 
and they could put up a small foresail, which in 
two more awful days brought them to the land. 
But they were running ashore with such violence 
that they would have been lost beyond a doubt, if 
six brave “ liveyeres ” had not put out to rescue 
them. Their boat was smashed to flinders. 

Then they found that all this time they had 
been going due north, for a hundred and fifty 
miles. They had to stay till the next summer. 
Their friends, when they got back to New¬ 
foundland, had given them up for dead. 

A fisherman said to Grenfell, in explaining 
why he couldn’t swim: “ You see, we has enough 
o’ the water without goin’ to bother wi’ it when 
we are ashore.” This man had barely escaped 
drowning on no less than four occasions. Once 
he saved himself by clinging to a rope with his 
teeth, after his hands were too numb to serve 
him, till they hauled him aboard. 

The shore of one of the Labrador bays had a 
total adult population of just one man. As the 
ice was breaking up in the spring, he had sent 
his two young sons out on the ice-pans in pursuit 
of seals. 


THE KIDNAPPERS 


227 


But the treacherous flooring gave way, and 
the father from the shore saw his boys struggling 
in the water. 

He tied a long fishing-line round his body, 
and gave the other end to his daughter. While 
she held it he crawled out over the pans. Then 
he jumped into the bitter water, like a deep-sea 
diver going down to examine a wreck, and 
stayed between and below the pans till he had 
recovered both bodies—but the last spark of life 
was extinct. 

Almost under the windows of Dr. Grenfell’s 
hospital at Battle Harbor two men started with 
sled and dogs to get fire-wood. They were 
rounding a headland, when the sled went into 
the water, taking not merely the dogs but the 
drivers with it. One man got under the ice, and 
was seen no more. The other clung to the edge 
of the ice, too weak to crawl out. 

His sister saw what happened, and came 
running over the ice. Men further away who 
were bringing a boat shouted to her: “ For 
God’s sake, don’t go near the hole.” She did not 
heed their warning. Instead, she threw herself 
flat, so as to distribute her weight, and dragged 


228 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 
herself along till she was close enough to reach 
her brother's hand. 

She could not quite pull him out. He was 
so benumbed that he could not help in the 
rescue. She lifted his body part way over the 
edge of the ice-sheet and held on. 

Nearer and nearer the boat came with the 
rescuers shouting encouragement. “ We're 
a-comin', girl! Don’t let go!" Her strength 
was almost gone. But she was bound to be 
faithful unto death—if the sea claimed her 
brother it must take her too. 

She did not cry out. She wasted no energy in 
words upon the frosty air. The boat seemed 
ages in coming, though the rowers plied the oars 
with might and main. 

One of her legs had broken through the ice. 
At any instant she might find herself struggling 
in the sea, and her agony of effort would have 
been in vain. 

At what seemed the last second of the last 
moment for the pair, the brawny arms of the 
fishermen hauled them over the gunwale. 

She told the story simply, and as though it 
were all in the day’s work. 


THE KIDNAPPERS 


229 


“ What made you go on? ” Grenfell asked her. 
“ I couldn’t see him drown, could I? ” was all 
her reply. 


XII 


WHEN THE BIG FISH “ STRIKE IN ” 

“ DOCTOR, how do you catch the codfish? 
Do you use a hook and line, the same as father 
and I do when we go fishing in Long Island 
Sound? ” 

The speaker was a New York boy who hadn’t 
been north of Boston, until one summer his 
father let him go to St. John’s for the sea-trip. 
There by great good luck he ran into the Doctor, 
who had come from St. Anthony in his little 
steamer the Strathcona. 

“You can catch codfish with a hook and 
line,” explained the Doctor, “ but it would take 
too long for the fishermen who have to get their 
living from the sea. 

“ Most of the time they use a great big net, 
called a 1 cod-trap.’ 

“ It’s like a room of network without a roof. 
It has a door, and the cod are steered in at the 
door by another net which reaches from the cod- 
trap to the rocks.” 


THE BIG FISH “ STRIKE IN ” 231 

11 1 should think the whole business would 
float away out to sea the minute it got the least 
bit rough,” said Harry. 

“ It might,” the Doctor admitted. “ But you 
see they have heavy anchors, or they tie big 
stones to the net at the bottom to hold it 
down.” 

“I’d love to see those cod coming in!” ex¬ 
claimed Harry. “They must push and shove 
like anything. But what do they want to go in 
for? I s’pose o’ course they must use some kind 
of bait.” 

“ They use the squid, or octopus,” said the 
Doctor. 

“ Are those the funny things that wave their 
arms around and throw out ink when they get 
mad? ” asked Harry. 

“ Yes.” 

“ Are they very big? ” 

“ They come in all sizes. There’s even such 
a thing as a giant squid. For a long time people 
laughed at the idea that there was any such 
monster. They thought he was a myth, like the 
sea-serpent. 

“ But one day two fishermen were plying their 


232 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

trade when two great arms rose out of the sea 
and clasped their boat and tried to drag it 
under. 

“ Luckily, they had a big knife, and they 
hacked away at the arms till they cut them off. 

“ The cuttlefish—that’s another name for it— 
made the sea about them as black as tar. But it 
did not try again. 

“ They took the arms ashore, and sold them to 
a man named Dr. Harvey. Everybody had been 
making fun of Dr. Harvey because he said there 
was such a thing as the giant squid. 

“ The Doctor hated strong drink, and so the 
clerks at the store of Job Brothers here in St. 
John’s were very much surprised when Dr. 
Harvey rushed in and shouted: 1 1 want a barrel 
of rum!’ 

“ Then he told them what he wanted it for— 
he wanted to send the giant squid to the Royal 
Society in London. The parts of the arms cut 
off were nineteen feet long. 

“ Later on, somebody who heard about it 
brought him an octopus that was lying dead on 
the water, whose reach was forty feet from tip 
to tip.” 


THE BIG FISH “ STRIKE IN ” 233 

“ How do they catch the octopus for bait? ” 
asked Harry. 

“ It’s exciting work. You see, besides having 
arms like a windmill, with curious sucking 
saucers on them, the octopus has a beak like a 
parrot, with awful teeth, and it can bite like any¬ 
thing. 

“ You’ll see a cluster of rowboats anchored 
close together, and the fishermen are jigging up 
and down a little bright red leaden weight, 
bristling with spikes. 

“ Suddenly there’s a stir. The squids have 
come rushing in, and they bite at those jiggers 
like a terrier after a rat. 

“ When the squids get those spiked weights 
in their mouths and are being hauled aboard— 
look out! 

“ All of a sudden—just the way people squirt 
things in the movies—they shoot out jets of ink 
at the fishermen. 

“ It stings like anything if it gets into your 
eyes and it ruins your clothes.” 

u How much do the squid cost when you buy 
them for bait? ” asked Harry, who had a prac¬ 
tical mind. 


234 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

“ Fifteen or twenty cents a hundred for the 
little ones.” 

“That isn’t much for all that work,” said 
Harry. 

Dr. Grenfell smiled. “You’ll find that the 
fishermen do lots of hard work for very little 
pay, Harry,” he answered. 

“ What other kind of bait do they use for the 
cod?” 

“ Caplin—a small fish like a sardine—and 
herring. Sand eels and white-fish sometimes. 
Bits of sea-gulls, and even rubber fish with 
hooks. Mussels don’t hold well on the hooks.” 

Harry looked thoughtful. “ I suppose it 
makes a lot o’ difference, having just the right 
kind o’ bait.” 

“ All the difference in the world,” the Doctor 
agreed. “ If a man can’t please the fish, he 
might as well burn his nets and boats and leave 
the sea.—But I was telling you about the cod- 
traps. 

“While the fish are following their leader, 
like so many sheep, in at the door of the trap, 
along comes the man they call the trap-master. 
Fie has a tube with plain glass in the bottom, 


THE BIG FISH “ STRIKE IN ” 235 

and he puts it down over the side of the boat and 
looks through it to see if the trap is full. 

“ When he thinks it’s full enough, the door is 
pulled up so the fish can’t get out, and the floor 
of the trap is hauled to the surface. 

“As it is lifted, a big dipper is put in, and 
the fish are ladled into the boat. 

“ When the boat is full, the rest of the fish are 
put into big net bags. These are tied to buoys, 
so the fishermen may come back later and get 
them.” 

“ I suppose the fishermen like to pick out the 
best places,” said Harry. 

“Yes—there’s a mad race on the day the 
season opens. You’ve got to get your cod-trap 
anchored in four days, with the net that leads 
from the shore put in place: and it’s a big job 
to do it in that time. 

“ Then there’s what they call the cod-seine. 
That’s worked by seven men. The seine-master, 
fish-glass in hand, stands in the bow: and the 
minute he sights the school of fish he gives orders 
for the next to be dropped. 

“ The men row in a circle and return to a 
buoy, paying out the net as they go. 


236 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 


“ The bottom rope is weighted, and they 
gather it round a central anchor into a bag as 
they row. It’s not so easy as it sounds, but 
‘ practice makes perfect.’ When they’ve got the 
fish bagged in this way they may scoop them up 
whenever they like. 

“ Other kinds of nets, as well as lines, are 
used. 

“ While those who use the lines generally take 
great pains to put on them the bait they think 
Mr. and Mrs. Cod will like, some fishermen 
make the others very angry by ‘ jigging ’ with 
unbaited hooks. 

“ This means that two hooks, joined back to 
back with a bit of lead that sinks them, are 
dropped where the fish are most thickly 
crowded. 

“ Then the line is jerked up and down. Half 
a dozen fish may be hurt for one that is hooked.” 

“What becomes of the one that gets hurt?” 
asked Harry. 

“ Oh, the rest of the cod rush at the poor 
fellow and eat him up! ” 

“They’re not good sports!” was the boy’s 
comment. “ Neither are the fishermen that hurt 


THE BIG FISH “ STRIKE IN ” 237 

the fish without catching them. That’s like 
hunters that shoot more animals than they can 
use for food. But I suppose fishing just for fun 
is a very different thing from fishing to make a 
living.” 

Dr. Grenfell’s blue eyes were very serious. 
“ It is,” he said. “ You have to go out with the 
fishermen to understand the difference.” 


XIII 


BIRDS OF MANY A FEATHER 

HARRY had seen and heard many kinds of 
birds alongshore, of all sizes and colors, some 
flying in curious ways and some making very 
queer sounds, so he asked the Doctor to tell him 
about them. 

“ The Labrador coast is one of the finest bird- 
nurseries anywhere,” said the Doctor. “ You 
can find about two hundred different kinds—if 
your eyes are sharp enough and your patience— 
and your shoes—hold out! 

“ Of course they don’t all live there the year 
round. Some of them are just summer board¬ 
ers. 

“ Maybe in a very lonely spot you’ll hear a 
bird all by himself, with a very sweet song—the 
hermit thrush. 

“ Perhaps there will be a chorus of pipits, fox 
and white-throated sparrows, robins, warblers 
and buntings. 


BIRDS OF MANY A FEATHER 239 

“You might even come upon a Nashville 
warbler or a Maryland yellow-throat! 

“ If eggs are collected in Labrador, the con¬ 
tents aren’t wasted. 

“ You bore a hole in the side of the egg, put in 
a blowpipe with a rubber bulb, and force the 
contents into a frying-pan. You can make fine 
omelet from the eggs of eiders, gulls, puffins and 
cormorants. Or you can mix flour with the 
eggs, add salt and butter, and make a nice pan¬ 
cake browned on both sides. 

“ It tastes rather fishy, of course, but it’s very 
filling, and when you come in after a long, hard 
run behind the dogs, or soaked to the skin from 
a boat-ride, it certainly is fine to fill up on cor¬ 
morant omelet while you pleasantly roast your¬ 
self before the leaping flames of a driftwood 
bonfire. 

“ A Labrador baby thinks that a gull’s egg is 
as good as a stick of candy. 

“ Puffins are lots of fun. You’ve read about 
the penguins in the Antarctic, where they have 
almost no other animals—how the penguins dive 
and swim and carry stones about, looking like 
solemn old gentlemen at a club in their dress 


240 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 
suits. Well, the puffins are to Labrador what 
penguins are to the South Pole country. 

“ Their burrows are two or three feet long, 
and the mother sits on a single dirty white egg 
in a straw nest. The birds have red, parrot-like 
bills, and they have pale grey faces with mark¬ 
ings that make them look as if they were wearing 
spectacles. 

“ Their bodies are chunky, and they shuffle 
about very clumsily. They don’t like it a bit 
when people come where they have their 
nests. 

“ But the razor-billed auk doesn’t make any 
nest—it just lays its egg on the bare rock in the 
biting cold. There are very few auks left to¬ 
day, but there were lots of them when Audubon 
the naturalist visited Labrador ninety years ago. 
Audubon tells how a band of ‘ eggers ’ started 
out just like pirates. 

“ All they cared about was to plunder every 
nest. 

“ They went sneaking along from cove to 
cove, turning in sometimes at the little caves or 
finding shelter in an angle of the rocks when the 
sea ran too high. 


BIRDS OF MANY A FEATHER 241 

“ While they were waiting they would fight 
and swear and drink. It’s a wonder that the 
eggers didn’t get drowned oftener, for their 
boats would be mended with strips of sealskin 
and the sails were patched like an old suit, and 
it looked as if a puff of wind would blow them 
over. 

“ These eggers got out of their sailing ship 
into a rowboat they towed, so as to go to an 
island of sea-pigeons, or guillemots—because 
they couldn’t get near enough in the larger 
vessel. 

“ As they came to the rocks, the birds rose up 
in a screaming white cloud. The air was full of 
them, just as you’ve seen the gulls creaking and 
crying about the hull of an ocean steamer, hop¬ 
ing to pick up food thrown overboard. 

“ But the mother birds stuck faithfully to the 
nests. It was the fathers and brothers that rose 
up in the air and made the noisy fuss. 

“All of a sudden—bang! the eggers dis¬ 
charged their guns in a volley right into the 
middle of the wheeling, screaming cloud of 
feathers overhead. 

“ Some fell into the water, and the rest in 


242 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

terror flew about not knowing where to go or 
what to do. 

“ The eggers picked up the birds that lay 
in rumpled, bloody heaps on the water. They 
made toothsome pies, and what they couldn’t eat 
they left behind. They didn’t care how many 
birds they killed, because there were plenty left. 

“ They weren’t shooting just for food—they 
were shooting mostly for fun. As they 
trampled about the island they crushed with 
their heavy boots more eggs than they picked 
up. 

“ No one would have blamed hungry men for 
killing enough birds and taking enough eggs to 
supply their families. But the eggers saw red, 
and just went on shooting and trampling with¬ 
out excuse. 

“ Years of that kind of thing turned many an 
island into a graveyard. 

“Well, when they had gathered some eggs 
and smashed the rest, they picked up the dead 
birds they wanted and carried them back to the 
boat. 

“ They jerked off the feathers and broiled the 
sea-pigeons. Then they brought out big, black 





Off Duty 













































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BIRDS OF MANY A FEATHER 243 

bottles of rum to take away the oily, fishy flavor, 
and filled themselves with strong drink and bird- 
flesh. 

“ They fell asleep, snoring drunk, and dawn 
found them piled about the deck helplessly. 

“ But when they got back to the island from 
which they started on their journey, they found 
that rivals had landed there, and were killing 
birds which they looked on as their own. 

“ There was a fight at once. 

“ The men who were coming back home fired 
a volley and then took their guns as if they were 
clubs and rushed toward their enemies. 

“Then, man to man, they fought like wild 
beasts. One man was carried to the boat with 
his skull fractured: another limped off with a 
bullet in his leg: a third was feeling his jaw to 
learn how many of his teeth had been driven 
through a hole in his cheek. 

“ So they fought till they tired of it, and then 
they pulled out the rum-bottles, and drank them¬ 
selves into forgetfulness of their fierce battle. 

“With the next morning came a hundred 
honest fishermen who wanted nothing more from 
the islands than the birds and the eggs they 


244 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

actually needed for their hungry wives and little 
ones at home. 

“ They had been eating salt meat for months: 
scurvy had broken out, and they wanted a change 
of diet. 

“ But the pirate eggers were bound they 
shouldn’t have it. The fishermen brought no 
guns: they weren’t looking for trouble: they 
were taken by surprise when the eggers rushed 
down on them like tigers roused from their lairs. 

“ One of the eggers, who had not slept off the 
effects of the carousal of the night before, shot 
one of the fishermen. Then the fishermen, who 
outnumbered the eggers about ten to one, gave 
the latter the beating of their lives. Fortu¬ 
nately, the fisherman who had been shot was not 
killed. 

“ That was the sort of thing that happened 
again and again in the bad old days. 

11 No wonder Audubon, as a great lover of 
birds, was very angry at these men who were 
making it impossible for birds to make their 
homes and lay their eggs and raise their families 
on the Labrador. They could have had all they 
wanted to eat without exterminating the birds, 


BIRDS OF MANY A FEATHER 245 

and never giving a thought to anybody who 
might come after them. 

“ The fishermen still, in many places, out of 
sight and reach of any law, take all the eggs and 
kill all the birds they can. 

“ But it’s not so bad as it was in Audubon’s 
time, when men from Halifax took about 40,000 
eggs which they sold for twenty-five cents a 
dozen. Near Cape Whittle he found two men 
gathering murre’s eggs. They were proud of 
the fact that they had collected 800 dozen and 
they didn’t intend to stop till they had taken 
2,000 dozen. The broken eggs made such a 
dreadful smell that it almost made him sick. 

“ The ivory gull, known as the 1 ice partridge,’ 
is sometimes caught by pouring seal’s blood on 
the ice. The birds swoop down to get it, and 
are shot. Some actually kill themselves by 
striking the ice too hard when they land, for 
they are so eager to get the blood. 

“ Labrador is a good place to study the diving 
birds, which are of two kinds. 

“ There are those that use their feet alone 
under the water—and then there are those that 
use only their wings. 


246 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

“ The feet-users clap their wings close to their 
sides when they dive. 

“ The wing-users spread out their pinions be¬ 
fore they strike the water. The puffin uses its 
wings under the water, and so do the other mem¬ 
bers of the auk family. 

“ In the duck family, there are both wing- 
swimmers and foot-swimmers. The ducks of the 
sorts known as old squaws, scoters and eiders 
fly under water. But the redheads and canvas- 
back ducks use only their feet under water. 
Mergansers dive with their wings against their 
sides, like a folded umbrella. The cormorants 
are famous swimmers, and use their feet 
alone. You know how the Chinese use cormo¬ 
rants as fish-catchers, putting rings about their 
necks to keep them from swallowing their 
prey. 

“ Among the birds classed as game-birds, the 
willow grouse are so easy to kill that a true 
sportsman doesn’t take much pleasure in going 
after them. 

“ They are often caught with nooses on the 
end of a stick, while they roost in the trees, and 
a group in this position may be killed all at once, 


BIRDS OF MANY A FEATHER 247 

if shot from the bottom, so that the falling bird 
doesn’t disturb the others. 

“ Cartwright, an early explorer, tells how he 
came upon a covey of six grouse and knocked off 
all their heads with his rifle. 

“ In winter, the willow grouse bury them¬ 
selves in the snow, and the 1 cock of the roost ’ is 
sentinel, keeping his head above the snow to 
watch for an enemy. 

11 The Canada goose, breeding about the lakes 
and ponds, is a grass-eater, and so tastes better 
than the fishy, oily gulls and divers. You can 
tame the goose and use it as a decoy. When a 
number are shot at a time, those that can’t be 
used right away are hung outside the house. 
There they freeze, and are kept fresh all winter 
long. 

“ There couldn’t be a better retriever for a 
duck-hunt than the Eskimo dog, I’ve watched 
them dash into the waves after a bird, only to 
be thrown back, bruised and winded, high up on 
the ledges of the rock. 

“ Then the return wave would drag them off, 
and pound them against the rocks. But the 
dogs would hang on for dear life, till their nails 


248 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 
were torn away and their paws were bleed¬ 
ing. 

“ Even that wouldn’t make them quit. They 
would return to the charge, and waiting for 
their chance they would jump right over the 
breaking crest and get clear of the surf. 

“When they’ve once got hold of a duck, 
nothing will make them let go. I’ve often been 
tempted to jump in and give the brave fellows 
a hand, when it seemed as if they couldn’t keep 
up the struggle any longer. 

“ They’d sink out of sight in a bigger wave 
than usual—and then, sure enough, you’d see the 
duck again, and the dog’s head after it, still true 
to duty even in the jaws of death. For some¬ 
times, in spite of all his pluck and cleverness, the 
dog is drowned.” 


XIV 


BEASTS BIG AND LITTLE 

BOTH on sea and land, Labrador animals have 
to be as tough as Labrador people to stand the 
hard life they must lead. 

Dr. Grenfell tells of a seal family he saw 
killed on an ice-pan about half the size of a 
tennis-court. 

They were surprised by four sealers, with 
wooden bats. Before they gave up their lives 
they put up a tremendous struggle. The father 
seal actually caught a club in his mouth and 
swung it from side to side with such violence 
that the sealers had to get off the pan. 

But at last he was dealt such a blow on the 
head that it was supposed he was killed. 

Instead of stripping off the pelt as the fallen 
monster lay on the pan, the sealers hoisted him 
aboard the steamer “ unscalped.” As he was 
being lifted over the rail—two thousand pounds 
of him—the strap broke, and back into the sea 
the huge carcass splashed. 


250 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

The cold water revived him. 

He swam back to the pan, which was marked 
by the blood stains of his slaughtered family— 
the mate with her young which he had fought 
so desperately to protect. 

The pan stood about six feet out of the water. 
Yet the great animal managed to fling himself 
upon it. 

The men, who had bread and tea to win for 
their families, could not afford to let him go. 

They went back after him, and this time they 
did not trust to their wooden bats. They used 
a few of their precious cartridges and shot him. 
And then they “ scalped ” him on the spot, and 
hauled the skin over the rail. 

It is painful to think of such a fate for the 
brave old warrior. 

Just as the cod-traps are put out from the 
shore, frame nets are set for the seals along the 
beach where they are fairly sure to pass at cer¬ 
tain times of the year. There is a capstan from 
which the doorway of the seal-trap may be 
closed with a few turns. The Doctor tells of 
one “ liveyere ” family that took nine hundred 
seals in this way: and three to four hundred is 


BEASTS BIG AND LITTLE 


251 


nothing unusual. One trapper named Jones 
was so successful at this business of trapping 
seals with the net that he became “ purse-proud.” 
From his land where there are no roads, he sent 
to Quebec for a carriage and horses, and then 
he had a road built on which he might parade 
them up and down to show his neighbors how 
rich he was. Then, for his dances o’ winter 
nights, no local fiddler would serve, scraping and 
patting his foot on the floor. He hired a real 
musician from Canada, who remained all winter 
playing jigs and reels to a continuous round of 
feasts and merry-making. But, as the familiar 
saying goes, it is often only one generation from 
shirt-sleeves to shirt-sleeves. In his case, the 
grandchildren finally found themselves with less 
than the shirt-sleeves. They appealed to Dr. 
Grenfell, and he found some old clothes on the 
boat to save them from freezing. 

The whale is really a land animal, which 
finally found the sea more amusing, and so took 
to “ a roving, nautical life.” 

Since the legs were no longer useful, in the 
course of time they became wee things, and were 
enclosed in the thick, tough skin. 


252 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

The “ arms ” were left outside, but they are 
nothing to boast of. They are not useful for 
swimming, but they help to balance the huge 
bulk, and mother whale seizes her baby with 
them when she takes alarm. 

The eyes are tiny, for when a whale eats he is 
not particular. 

It takes so many millions of little bits of 
creatures to give a whale a square meal, that if 
he misses a hundred thousand or so out of the 
side of his huge jaws, at the top of his narrow 
gullet, he need not worry. The whale never 
starves until he is stranded. Out of water he 
may continue to breathe for an hour or two— 
but he cannot eat. 

“ On a fine morning on the Labrador Coast,” 
Dr. Grenfell tells us, “ I have counted a dozen 
whales in a single school. Now and again a 
huge tail would emerge from the water and lash 
the surface with its full breadth, making a 
sound like the firing of a cannon, while the 
silence was otherwise broken only by the noise of 
their blowing, as they rolled lazily along on the 
surface.” 

The thresher whale is only about twenty feet 


BEASTS BIG AND LITTLE 


253 


long, but he is a fierce fellow—the pirate of the 
whale family, terrorizing the rest, and ready to 
tackle anything in sight. 

He has a fin which shows where he is as he 
cruises along close to the surface. He readily 
eats other whales. Three threshers went after 
a big cow sperm whale and her enormous infant, 
in shallow water. First they killed the “ calf.” 
Then they chased the mother away, and came 
back and ate the young one. 

In 1892 a huge sperm whale rammed the rocks 
near Battle Harbor, where Dr. Grenfell now 
has one of his hospitals. 

The whale evidently wondered why the rocks 
didn’t give way—for nearly everything else he 
encountered had collapsed when he butted into 
it. He lunged once too often, and was left high, 
if not dry, on the beach. 

They towed him into the harbor, a prize 
eighty feet in length, and proceeded to pump the 
oil out of him. From the head one hundred and 
forty gallons were taken. This oil in the 
whale’s head, which may be a third as big as his 
body, helps to float the great jawbones. 

Of course the “ blowing” of the whale is one 


254 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH * 

of its most remarkable performances. A whale 
can stay below an hour, because he puts air into 
his blood by spouting about sixty times, the 
operation taking him about ten minutes. 

Grenfell helped take to pieces a “ sulphur- 
bottom ” whale ninety-five feet long, supposed to 
weigh nearly 300,000 pounds. A boat could 
row into the mouth. The jawbone was nearly 
eighteen feet long. “ It took four of us a whole 
afternoon, with axes and swords mounted on 
pike handles, to cut out one bone and carry it to 
our steamer.” And in order to get back far 
enough to start cutting at the end, where the 
joint came, they “ had to walk almost in the foot¬ 
steps of Jonah.” 

The whale is the one animal that lives to a 
great age—and it is said whales have lived to be 
a thousand years old. A wolf is aged at twenty, 
a caribou or fox at fifteen. A personal ac¬ 
quaintance of the Doctor was a black-backed 
gull which had been in captivity for thirty-two 
years. 

The timber-wolf, which elsewhere is so fierce 
an animal, is comparatively mild-mannered in 
Labrador, and Grenfell has found no record of 


BEASTS BIG AND LITTLE 


255 


these wolves attacking men, though in packs they 
have often followed the settlers to the doors of 
their houses. 

There is nothing good to be said of the 
Labrador timber-wolf. Like the eggers of Au¬ 
dubon’s time, he seems to kill very often not for 
hunger’s sake but for the sheer love of killing 
animals that cannot fight back. Often the bodies 
of deer are found with only the tongues and the 
windpipe torn out by the mean and cowardly 
slayer. 

Sometimes the wolf bites the deer in the small 
of the back: or several wolves will stalk a cari¬ 
bou, some circling about to distract the attention 
of their prey while others creep up on it from 
behind. 

The caribou are amiable and affectionate, and 
it is easy to tame them if they are taken in hand 
when they are young. They make very satis¬ 
factory pets. 

Grenfell had one which went with him on his 
mission boat, like a dog or a cat. 

If not taken ashore, it would stand crying at 
the rail. 

It would follow him about while on land, and 


256 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 
swim after its master when Grenfell was in a 
rowboat. 

In the field it would come running to be 
petted, and if left behind within the palings 
would stand up on its hind legs and try desper¬ 
ately to butt its way out and follow the Doctor. 

Sometimes the caribou has been successfully 
used to haul a sled. 

The Labrador black bear is almost as harm¬ 
less as the caribou. 

Grenfell bought a cub, and in the winter-time 
gave him a barrel, to see if he would know what 
to do, having no mother to guide him. 

The bear knew by instinct how to make him¬ 
self a warm and cosy nest for his long winter 
sleep. 

He found grass and moss, put them in 
the barrel, and trampled them down to make a 
padded lining such as a human being could 
hardly have bettered. 

We all know the story of General Israel Put¬ 
nam,—how he crawled into the wolf-den at 
Pomf ret and shot a wolf “ by the light of its own 
eyes.” A trapper in Labrador, instead of crawl¬ 
ing into a den where an animal lay, entered an 


BEASTS BIG AND LITTLE 257 

empty lair, under a cliff. It seemed to have 
been made on purpose for campers. 

He lit his small lantern, ate his supper, and 
then curled up as tidily as any four-footed tenant 
and fell asleep. 

Like the bears in the fairy tale, who came 
back to find Goldilocks in the chair and then in 
the bed of one of them, the real owners of the 
cave appeared in the night. 

The hunter was awakened suddenly by a noise 
like rolling thunder in the narrow entrance. 
He turned up his lamp, and the flare showed 
him a bear, so huge that it blocked the passage¬ 
way. 

Nimbly the hunter reached for his gun, and 
before the animal could do anything more than 
growl and threaten, a shot had tumbled him flat. 

Shoving aside the body, the trapper went out 
into the cold starlight, for he knew that the mate 
of the slain beast might appear at any moment. 

Sure enough, presently over the brow of the 
hill there shambled in black silhouette two more 
bears. 

He took careful aim and fired and brought 
them both down. 


258 KNIGHT-ERllANT OF THE NORTH 

The next time he makes a tour of his traps he 
probably will not choose a bear’s den for his 
night’s lodging. A bear that is harmless in the 
open may be excused for getting violent if he 
finds a man asleep in the very bed he fixed for 
himself. 

Grenfell’s experience with bears for pets—he 
has tried to tame nearly everything animate 
from gulls to whales—was not so happy as with 
the caribou. He found that if “ pigs is pigs,” 
bears “ remain bears, and are not to be trusted.” 
He had two bear playmates for a long time, but 
when they hit out with their paws they dealt 
some “ very nasty scratches,” and what was fun 
for them was more serious for the tender pelt of 
a human being. 

The wolverine lives by his wits. 

He will turn over a trap and set it off before it 
can nip him. 

He is the pest of the man who has fur traps, 
for he will go from trap to trap and grab what¬ 
ever he finds therein. 

He can climb trees and get meat which the 
owner thought was secure. 

Sometimes when he is caught he will get away 


BEASTS BIG AND LITTLE 259 

with the trap and chain still attached to his leg. 
He will even carry the trap in his mouth, to 
relieve the strain. Like Kipling’s Fuzzy 
Wuzzy in the Sudan, he has a great way of 
shamming dead. He may jump up and bite the 
hunter, or he may make a sudden dash for free¬ 
dom. Can you blame him? 

One of the most satisfactory creatures of all 
is the beaver. I remember a pair in a pond on 
the west coast of Newfoundland, at Curling, 
where a beaver colony had a fine big house they 
had built in a lake with a dam of their making at 
one end. I didn’t go into the house, which was 
mainly under water, but the male beaver evi¬ 
dently feared I would, and just as he dived he 
smartly slapped the water with his tail to give 
the danger signal to the lady who was placidly 
nosing about and grubbing for the roots of 
water-plants at the other side of the pond. 

u Walking one day through thick wood, says 
Grenfell, “ we came across a regular ‘ pathway,’ 
the trees having been felled to make traveling 
easy. A glance at the stumps showed that it was 
a road cut by beavers, to enable them to drag 
their boughs of birch along more easily. 


260 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

“ The pathway led to a large house on the 
edge of a lake, and, fortunately for us, the 
beaver was at home. There were other houses 
on an island in the lake, and below them all a 
large, strong dam, some thirty yards long, and 
below this two more complete dams across the 
river that flowed out. The dams were made of 
large tree-trunks, with quantities of lesser 
boughs, and were many feet thick, and very 
difficult to break down. The houses were built 
half on land, half in the water. The sitting- 
room is up-stairs on the bank, and so is the 
1 crew’s ’ bedroom, and the front door is made 
at least three feet below the surface to prevent 
being 1 frozen out ’ in winter, or, worse still, 
1 frozen in.’ 

“The whole house was neatly rounded off, 
and so plastered with mud as to be warm and 
weather-proof. This is done by means of their 
trowel-like tails, which are also of great use in 
swimming. The house was so strong that even 
with an axe we could not get in without very 
considerable delay. 

“ In the deep pond they had dammed up, we 
found a quantity of birch poles pegged out. 


BEASTS BIG AND LITTLE 261 

The bark of these forms their winter food, and 
is called ‘ browse.’ The beaver cuts off enough 
for dinner, and takes it into his house. Sitting 
up, he takes the stem in his fore paws, and rolls 
it round and round against his chisel-shaped 
incisor teeth, swallowing the long ribands of 
bark thus stripped off. . . . When sur¬ 

prised they retreat to holes in the bank, of which 
the entrances are hidden under water. These 
are called ‘ hovels.’ 

“ Beavers always work up wind when felling 
trees, and cut them on the water side, so that 
they fall into the pond if possible, and the wind 
helps to blow them home. This beaver we 
caught proved to be a hermit—at least he was 
living alone. He may have been a widower of 
unusual constancy. They do not destroy fish, 
their food in summer being preferably the stems 
of the water-lilies. Otters occasionally kill and 
eat beavers. When they call, the beaver has to 
try and be 1 not at home.’ ” 

While the beaver evidently has strong feelings 
on the subject of the otter, who seems to be a 
burglar and a murderer, he apparently does not 
mind the lowly muskrat as a summer boarder, 


262 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 
even though the latter does not pay for his lodg¬ 
ing. 

Of course the lord of the animate creation on 
land in the north—as the sperm whale is 
monarch of the sea—is the polar bear. Gren¬ 
fell gives a most interesting account of this white 
king of beasts whom we properly pity on warm 
days as he lolls and pants by the soup-like water 
of his tank in one of our southern Zoos. The 
Doctor once saw a polar bear swimming three 
miles out at sea, headed, by a marvelous instinct, 
straight for the north. There was no convenient 
ice-pan floating near on which he might clamber 
for a snooze. This bear had been shot, and he 
floated high in the water, so that evidently his 
fat was a great help to him, enabling him to stay 
at sea as long as he pleased. 

The polar bears wander from their native 
shores: they seem to enjoy travel, and when they 
sail south on pans of ice they are looking for 
that toothsome morsel, the seal. 

If they cannot get seals, these bears devour the 
eggs of sea-birds on the islands. 

When they swim after ducks, they hide under 
water, all but the nose: and since that nose is 


BEASTS BIG AND LITTLE 


263 


black, and therefore a telltale, they have been 
seen to bury it in the snow when creeping toward 
a seal-herd. 

The polar bear stands a poor chance against 
a pack of lively and determined dogs. 

They have reason to fear his huge paws and 
tearing claws until he tires, but he cannot face 
all ways at once, and if there are enough dogs 
the struggle soon becomes hopeless. 

They are not fast enough to get away from 
the fleet smaller animals. 

In the water, where they swim slowly and 
dive expertly, the fishermen may easily “ do for 
them ” with a blow from an axe or an oar. 
Though the polar bear has a fishy taste, the 
Eskimos relish the meat, and the prospect of a 
successful bear-hunt delights the savage breast. 


XV 


THE KEEPER OF THE LIGHT 

ONCE I asked Dr. Grenfell if he was tired. 
His blue eyes lit up as if I had thrown salt into 
a fire. He threw his head back and said: 
“ Tired? I was never tired in my life! ” 

But I thought he was weary that September 
evening in 1919 when he sat with his legs un¬ 
kinked to the cheerful blaze, in the big living- 
room of his comfortable house at St. Anthony. 

The wind can go whooping around that house 
all it likes and it never will get in unless it is 
invited. That house was nailed and shingled, 
doored and windowed, to stand up against the 
stiffest blast that ever came howling across the 
rocks and bergs from the Humboldt Glacier or 
even the North Pole. 

Part of the time a blind piano-tuner was at 
work groping for lost chords among the strings 
of Mrs. Grenfell’s piano. The piano didn’t 
seem to need tuning so much. But the man 
needed the work. You can imagine there is not 


THE KEEPER OF THE LIGHT 265 

much for a blind piano-tuner to do in New¬ 
foundland. Most of the music is the canned 
variety of the Victrola. Or, if there is a dance, 
someone may squat obligingly in a corner and 
hum very loudly what is called by its true name 
—“ chin-music.” 

Mrs. Grenfell, happy to have her husband 
back from the gales and fogs for a little while, 
was sitting in the puffy armchair with her knit¬ 
ting-needles, and the boys, Pascoe and Wilfred, 
were up-stairs with their teacher, making out 
jig-saw puzzles in arithmetic or knocking the tar 
out of the French Grammar, with various loud 
sounds. 

What the telephone is to busy men in 
America, giving them no peace even in the bath¬ 
tub, the telegraph is to the Doctor in Newfound¬ 
land. If it isn’t a man on the doorstep with a 
bleeding cut or a hacking cough, then it is a boy 
with a message which comes from a point twenty 
to sixty miles off. Most of the time your doctor 
or mine has a few blocks to go: and we think it 
hard, and he thinks so too, if a patient clamors 
for him in the middle of the night. But the 
middle of the night is the heart of Grenfell’s 


266 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

office hours. Once after conducting a late even¬ 
ing service in the church at Battle Harbor he 
had to doctor forty patients in the room off the 
chancel before he could get away. 

So it was no surprise to him, in the midst of a 
tale of the old days at Oxford on the football- 
field, to have a rat-tat like Poe’s raven at the 
door, and a respectful “ young visitor ” doffing 
his sou’wester. 

“ Please, sir, a telegram.” 

Grenfell tore it open. 

It read: “ Doctor would you please come. 
My throat is full up and I can’t eat or sleep.” 

It was signed “ J. N. Cote.” 

“ That,” said Grenfell, “ is the lighthouse- 
keeper at Greenley Island, just west of the line 
that divides Canadian Labrador from New¬ 
foundland Labrador. He has a big job on his 
hands. He has two fog-horns, each with a 
twelve horse-power Fairbanks gasoline engine, 
so that if one’s put out of business he can use the 
other. He’s had fog all summer—and a sub- 
tonsillar abscess, too. The big Canadian Pacific 
ships go by his place. It’s a bad spot. The 
light-keeper at Forteau tried to bring out his 


THE KEEPER OF THE LIGHT 267 

wife and five children—and lost all but one child 
on the rocks. Another keeper at Belle Isle 
tried to bring out a family of about the same 
size—and they all were lost. A doctor stopped 
in on Captain Cote on the down trip from Battle 
Harbor, on his way back to Baltimore. Evi¬ 
dently whatever he did wasn’t enough. Looks 
as if I must go and finish the job.” 

As if to settle the question, even while he 
spoke there came another messenger—like the 
first, a volunteer—bringing another telegram. 

This time, as in those messages sent from Cape 
Norman about the woman, the tone was sharper, 
more imperative and anxious. 

“ Please come as fast as you can to operate 
me in the throat and save my life.” 

The shade of concern in the Doctor’s grave 
face deepened. 

“ Cote doesn’t cry out for nothing,” he said. 
“ He’s a real man. We must go. Would you 
rather stay here and rest a few days, or will you 
go with me? ” Who would care to toast his 
toes and dally with a book, while Grenfell was 
abroad on such a mission? I had a quick vision 
of the gallant run the Strathcona would be 


268 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 
called on to make—squirming through the rocks 
and bucking the headwinds and the heavy seas, 
to save that lighthouse-keeper and keep the big, 
proud ships from Montreal and Quebec from 
running blind in the dark. Not far from that 
spot a British man-of-war ran aground in 1922 
and was a total loss, though happily her men 
were saved. I have been in the wireless cabin 
on the topmost crags of Belle Isle when the 
Straits all round about, fog-bound, were clam¬ 
orous with the ships, anchor-down, calling to 
one another and whimpering like little lost chil¬ 
dren trying to clasp hands and afraid in the dark 
together. 

It would be a run of a hundred miles from St. 
Anthony to Captain Cote’s strangling throat— 
and what miles they were! Not until the 
middle of June had the mail-boat—that poor, 
doomed Ethie of the dog’s rescue—been able to 
pierce the ice. Where those ice-pans met at 
Cape Bauld the grinding, rending and heaving 
of their battle was worse to hear and see than all 
the polar bears or the tusked walruses that ever 
rose up and fought together. 

Dr. Grenfell could be perfectly sure that 


269 


THE KEEPER OF THE LIGHT 

he would have to run a gauntlet all the way— 
picking and choosing between crags on the one 
hand and bergs on the other: just such a risky, 
“ chancy ” course as he most relishes. While 
he crumpled the telegram in his hand I could 
see his eyes light up again with that flash 
they showed when I asked him if he was ever 
tired. 

His pockets at that moment were full of plead¬ 
ing, piteous letters from White Bay, meant to 
pull him to the other side of the island. One of 
them, from a desperate woman, after saying her 
husband had caught but eleven dollars’ worth 
of fish all season, wound up with an appeal for 
oddments of clothes to put on the children, for 
“ We are all as naked as birds.” 

It was hard to say no to the heart-throbs of 
those begging letters in his pocket. But Cap¬ 
tain Cote’s life was not one life. It was the lives 
of thousands—men, women and children—going 
down to the sea in ships, faring through the St. 
Lawrence, and the Gulf, and then those terrible 
Straits of Belle Isle, to the Old Country. 

So we started. But was Mrs. Grenfell going 
to stay home with the piano, and French verbs, 


270 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

and her fancy-work, while the Strathcona nosed 
the seething waters? Not on your life! Wil¬ 
fred and Pascoe had a perfectly good governess, 
and while it was hard on them to remain behind 
with their books, their turn with Father was 
coming. 

The big black dog, named Fritz, had no 
French verbs to study, and no measly sums in 
arithmetic to do, so—at one running jump—he 
was added to the passenger-list. His berth was 
chiefly out on the end of the bowsprit—he was 
more ambitious than a figurehead. There he 
could sniff the breeze, and see the shore, even 
when there wasn’t any, and bark defiance at all 
the dogs and the sea-pusses. 

The Strathcona used both steam and sail. She 
was ketch-rigged, with six sails—mainsail, fore¬ 
sail, two jibs, two topsails. One of those top¬ 
sails was a fancy, oblong thing which Dr. Gren¬ 
fell’s crew mistrusted as though it were witch¬ 
craft. He had brought it from the North Sea; 
they had never seen the likes of it before, and 
their minds are likely to be sternly set against 
anything new. But the Doctor, who is restless 
on shipboard, climbed to the crow’s nest now and 


THE KEEPER OF THE LIGHT 


271 


then to adjust the strange contraption, and make 
sure that it was using the wind in such a way 
as to develop the last ounce of pulling power. 
This was no pleasure cruise. It was a run for 
life. 

The sea was a vast blue smile as we swaggered 
out of St. Anthony Harbor. What a fickle 
creature is that northern ocean! This was the 
first clear day in ever so long—and now the sun 
and the water were in conspiracy to pretend it 
had always been this gay, fair weather. 

The only blemish on the seascape was a troop 
of bergs, six in number, out yonder to starboard. 
But they were dim and distant as we bore in 
toward the headland at Quirpon Tickle. Quir- 
pon is called “ Carpoon ” by the fishermen be¬ 
cause that isn’t the way to pronounce it. And 
Tickle has nothing to do with making you laugh. 
Quite the contrary. It means a very serious 
business of creeping and twisting snakewise 
through a channel that winds among the rocks. 
You are perfectly sure you are about to ram the 
face of a wall—and then, lo and behold! there is 
a way out at the last minute, and it leads you to 
another wall and another rift that suddenly and 


272 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

impossibly opens to let you through. You have 
to think of the pirates who used to run and hide 
in places like that, and give the slip to honest 
sailor men from France and England who were 
trying to run them down. If they didn’t meet 
the pirates they met and fought each other, 
which was vastly diverting to the pirates and 
perhaps just as satisfying to themselves. 

There were fishermen’s dories bouncing about 
like happy children in the shallower waters near 
the shore. I happened to be at the wheel, and 
my one idea was not to hit those sharp and cruel 
rocks, not to strike a fisherman, and to give the 
widest berth I could to the distant menace of 
those icebergs. 

Grenfell, red-booted and brown-sweatered, 
put his head in at the wheel-house door, and the 
wind ruffled his silver hair as he cried: “ Run 
her so close to those rocks that you all but skin 
her!” 

You see, his mind was only on Captain Cote, 
with the choke in his throat, strangling and 
struggling, but going on with his duty as the 
keeper of the light with the beams outflashing 
to the long, far bellow of his mighty horn. 


THE KEEPER OF THE LIGHT 273 

In our race against time, we were burning 
coal, that precious commodity, then twenty-four 
dollars a ton,—and much more costly to-day. 
Spruce and fir and juniper were piled on deck— 
some of the wood across the barrels of whale- 
meat, in a vain attempt to shut off the rotten 
smell of the food so loved by the dogs. But, 
hasten as we might, the night closed down like 
a lid on a box as we sounded our gingerly way 
through the perilous twistings of the Tickle. 
The wind was rising, and as we looked back we 
saw the waves, running white and high at a mad 
dance in cold moonlight. If we went on, and 
came out into the Straits, the wind would hold 
us there without an inch of gain, though we had 
the full power of the engines going and all sails 
set. The Strathcona, a tiny steamer of less than 
fifty tons, was no match for the sea aroused in 
opposition. It is a miracle that this small boat, 
the Strathcona , lived so long, with so many at¬ 
tempts of ice and rock to punch the life out of 
her wherever she went. 

Dr. Grenfell, as his habit is on shipboard, rose 
at two, at three and at four to study his charts 
and lay out his course, and at twenty minutes to 


274 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

five his strong hands were at the wheel, on which 
are the words “ Follow me, and I will make you 
fishers of men.” 

The dog Fritz had been sleeping all night on 
a thick blue woolen blanket in the bunk below 
mine. He had no business there, and he knew 
it, but as regularly as I turned him out into the 
nipping air and the frosty starlight he would 
return indignantly. “ What’s the matter with 
you?” his wrinkled face seemed to say. 
“ You’re just a visitor on this boat, and I belong 
here. What right have you to keep me out of a 
nice warm bed? You don’t need this whole 
cabin, you selfish man.” Finally my patience 
gave out and I let him have his way. 

Under the red edges of the dawn, a fresh 
breeze blowing, we came within hail of that 
ugly rock named the Onion. “ In that bay over 
there,” laughed Grenfell, “ we were blown 
across the ice—sled and dogs and all—when we 
were trying to round up the reindeer herd. We 
had the time of our lives! 

“ You see, we had brought a bunch of rein¬ 
deer all the way from Lapland, and Lapp herd¬ 
ers came with them, to keep off the dogs and 


THE KEEPER OF THE LIGHT 275 

prevent the natives from shooting them as if they 
were caribou. On one occasion we had a real 
‘ Night before Christmas ’ celebration, and St. 
Nick delighted the children at the Orphanage 
where he came with his gifts on a big sled be¬ 
hind a real team of reindeer. 

“ But the reindeer spread all over the penin¬ 
sula, and the Lapps couldn’t keep track of their 
charges. The hunters and the dogs were hard 
on the trail of the herd. You couldn’t blame 
hungry men and famished animals. 

“ I meant in time to persuade the people to 
give up their dogs and use reindeer instead. 
The reindeer could draw sleds, and would give 
milk, and meat too, if necessary, and their furs 
would be valuable. There wouldn’t be any risk 
of their hurting children, or strangers, or sick 
people, and they wouldn’t make night hideous 
with their howling. 

“ But at last, in order to save the remnant, it 
was necessary to move them, and I decided to 
load them on a fishing-vessel and take them 
across the Straits to the St. Augustine River 
country, where they could increase in peace, and 
the dogs would not bother them, and the Ca- 


270 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

nadian Government could protect them from 
any Indian hunters who might come along. 

“ It was a fine plan, on paper. But it was 
like the old recipe for making a rabbit pie— 
* first catch your hare.’ The reindeer having 
had the run of the open spaces so long saw no 
reason why they should be caught and put on a 
boat and carried off. 

“ So they gave us a run for it, I can tell you! 
All over the place we rushed, shouting and try¬ 
ing to lasso or corner the terrified animals. I 
never laughed so hard in my life. The wind 
was blowing great guns, and you simply couldn’t 
stand up against it. We caught a great many 
of the reindeer. But a lot of them romped off 
into the woods and took to the hills and we 
never saw them again. Since they were moved 
to Canada they have done well—and some day, 
when the people are ready to have them, I want 
to move them back and see if we can’t replace 
the dog-teams with them.” 

Meanwhile the little ship had turned her head 
away from the unsavory Onion, and was running 
on, over a long diagonal, to cross the straits in 
the bared teeth of the green and yeasty waves. 


THE KEEPER OF THE LIGHT 277 

That she was top-heavy was plainly to be seen, 
with her barrels of whale-meat and her high- 
piled fire-wood on deck, and almost no ballast or 
cargo below. 

As we stood out into the middle of the channel, 
I thought of the great boats that must feel their 
way through the dense fog in evil weather. 
They would have to be honking like wild geese, 
even though the straits at their narrowest be¬ 
tween Flower’s Cove and Greenley Island are 
ten miles wide. Fog is a terrible deceiver. I 
remember coming up the East Coast on the mail- 
steamer Invermore in 1913. In a day after 
leaving Twillingate we were nearly wrecked 
three times. First, when we thought we were 
ten miles offshore, we found a tiny skiff, with 
two persons aboard, in our path—we nearly ran 
it down. Father and small son, fourteen, were 
fishing for cod, and had their meagre catch in a 
tin pail. Captain Kane had stopped our boat— 
we were going at quarter speed—and he 
had the man come up on the bridge to 
show us where the land lay. “ Out yonder! 
The ancient mariner pointed to the north¬ 
west. A rowboat was manned: in a few 


278 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

minutes its crew came back and reported that 
the rocks were not more than two hundred yards 
away. So we backed off, and steamed hard in 
the opposite direction. But only an hour or so 
later,—pulled steadily on and on toward the 
shore, by the strong, insetting tide,—we saw the 
grey edge of the fog lifting like a table-cloth, 
and there were those cruel rocks again, dragons 
in a lair, waiting to receive us, crush our bones 
and drink our blood. Again we backed away— 
and before long the fierce jangle of the bell in 
the engine room and the captain’s sharp accent of 
command from the bridge once more halted us 
suddenly. There, directly before our prow, 
was a great white wall of ice, which had taken 
almost the color of the mist. It was an iceberg 
that barred our path, and if we had been speed¬ 
ing like the Titanic instead of creeping like a 
snail, it would doubtless have been the end of 
the Invermore. Only one more tragedy of a 
missing ship. 

At four in the afternoon, when the great rock 
bastion of Belle Isle loomed across our bows, 
we gave up for the night: and next morning, 
between seven and eight, no fewer than eight 


THE KEEPER OF THE LIGHT 279 

enormous icebergs crossed our bows in a glitter¬ 
ing processional. 

But to-day, mid-stream, there was no fog, and 
despite the roughness of the water the cool air 
and clear sunlight were cause for rejoicing. 
“ Isn’t it fun to live? ” exclaimed the Doctor, as 
he swung the wheel; and the Strathcona, feeling 
her master’s hand, trembled and obeyed. 

Fritz, out yonder on the prow, was staring to¬ 
ward the bleak Labrador coast. Was he think¬ 
ing of dogs to fight, and fish to eat, and a snooze 
on the beach, after the run was over and the 
anchor was down? No—he was looking at 
something near at hand—and his ears were even 
quicker than ours to catch over the voice of 
waves or wind the cry of men in a power-boat 
off the starboard bow. 

There were three of them. Two of them held 
up the third man, whose bare head flopped over 
on his chest. The collar of his overcoat was 
turned up to shelter that agonizing throat. Yes, 
it was Captain Cote, the man we came so far to 
seek. 

“ Doctor! ” they called. “ He couldn’t wait! 
We’ve brought him out to ye! ” 


280 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

A moment more and hands as tender as they 
were willing were lifting him over the rail. A 
wee baby would have had no gentler handling. 

Captain Cote’s face was the greenish white of 
a boiled potato. It was seamed with deep lines 
of pain and sleepless nights. He was carried to 
the brass rungs of the ladder and lowered. 

“ Easy! easy! ” those who let him down were 
saying to each other. They seemed to fear he 
would break if they dropped him. 

By the light of a battered tin lamp Grenfell 
ran a needle into his throat with the novocaine 
that would destroy the pain of the operation. 

Then he took his thin scissors a foot long and 
thrust them into the abscess under the tonsils. 

Five minutes later, Captain Cote had found 
the use of his tongue again, and, waving both 
hands round his ears as he talked, he was thank¬ 
ing God and Dr. Grenfell, and giving us the full 
history of the dreadful months he spent before 
help came. 

Next day we landed on his island—Greenley 
Island. From the small wharf where women 
were cleaning fish there were two lines of plank¬ 
ing laid, on cinders, for perhaps a thousand feet 


THE KEEPER OF THE LIGHT 281 

through the long green grass to the red brick 
lighthouse tower. On these wooden rails was 
the chassis of a Ford car, and we rode in state. 
But you had to stick closely to the track, or 
you came to grief on the rough, shelly soil along¬ 
side. 

“ It’s the first automobile ride I ever had in 
Labrador!” the Doctor gleefully exclaimed. 

In the lighthouse was a living-room with a 
talking-machine, a violin, a typewriter and other 
things to add to the comfort of a home and make 
a family happy. 

The patient was brought into the room by 
his beaming wife and two of his children. 

“ How are you this morning, Captain? ” asked 
Grenfell. 

“ Feeling fine, Doctor.” 

“ Did you sleep? ” 

“ Slept like a baby. First time in three 
months.” 

“ And can you eat? ” 

“ I can eat rocks, Doctor.” 

Then the Captain brought out a pocketbook 
stuffed with greenbacks. Twelve hundred 
dollars a year, with nothing to spend it for, since 


282 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

he gets his living, seems a fortune to a man in 
that part of the world. 

“ How much do I owe you? ” He pulled out 
three ten-dollar bills. 

“ One of those will do,” said the Doctor, 
quietly. 

It was right for him to take the money. Self- 
respect on Captain Cote’s part demanded that 
he should pay. Grenfell lets his patients pay in 
wood or fish or whatever they have, a value 
merely nominal compared with what they re¬ 
ceive. But he wants them to feel—and they, too, 
wish to feel—that they are not beggars, living 
on the dole of his charity. 

“ Now then, Doctor, how about the coal you 
burned getting here? How much does that 
come to? The Canadian Government’ll give it 
back to you. We’ve got some down on the 
wharf. We can take it out now and put it on 
your boat.” 

The emergency run of the Strathcona had 
used five tons and a quarter. At twenty-four 
dollars a ton, this would be worth one hundred 
and twenty-six dollars. 

We went down to the wharf, and tried to put 


THE KEEPER OF THE LIGHT 283 

the coal, which was soft coal, like dust, on a 
skiff, to take it two hundred yards in a half-gale 
to the Strathcona. 

But the mighty wind blew the coal out of the 
boat as fast as it was shoveled aboard. 

Then Captain Cote said, “ We’ll send it, when 
calm weather comes, to Sister Bailey at For- 
teau.” She was a wonderful trained nurse,—a 
friend of Edith Cavell,—who lived in the near¬ 
by village, and had a cow that fought off the 
dogs and gave milk to the sick babies. 

So Captain Cote’s life was saved and the great 
boats from Montreal and Quebec with their 
hundreds of passengers could enter and traverse 
the Straits in any weather, because the keeper of 
the light was at his post once more. 




XVI 

THROUGH THE BLIZZARD 

ANOTHER trip was to the north, in January, 
over the thirty miles from St. Anthony to Cape 
Norman, to save a woman’s life. It all looks so 
easy when you get out the map and measure it 
across white space. 

But when that white space is snow instead of 
paper, and there are thirty miles of it to flog 
through, instead of three inches under your 
hand—that, as Kipling would say, is another 
story. 

Over the telegraph line from Cape Norman 
to St. Anthony came a piteous message from a 
young fisherman. It said his wife was dying. 
Grenfell telegraphed back, the message running 
something like this: “ My assistant has gone off 
with the dogs to answer another call. Cannot 
leave my patients at the hospital and cannot get 
any dogs till he comes back.” 

Then another message came from the dis¬ 
tracted husband: “ Doctor, my wife is dying. 


THROUGH THE BLIZZARD 285 

For God’s sake find another team somewhere 
and come.” 

The night, as the island saying is, was as dark 
as the inside of a cow. Grenfell stumbled out 
into the blackness to hunt for dogs. The trail 
to Cape Norman is very rough, and the January 
snow was deep. The wind blowing over it 
threw the snow, biting and blinding, in the face 
of anyone who attempted the trail. 

But Grenfell did not hesitate. From house 
to house he went, to rouse the occupants like 
another Paul Revere, and beg for dogs that he 
might use on the desperate journey. 

One man let him take four. Another, for 
pay, gave him a fifth animal. A boy named 
Walter said he would get four more dogs and 
would drive the ill-assorted team. By that time 
it was midnight. 

“ We’ll start at 4:30,” said the Doctor. At 
4:30 it would still be pitch-black. 

Grenfell went back to the hospital, roused the 
head nurse, and went to every patient to make 
sure that while he was gone no accident would 
happen that he could possibly prevent. 

At 4:30 he was ready to start Few men are 


286 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

his match for staying up all night and looking as 
fresh as a mountain daisy after the vigil. 

He opened the door and a blizzard swept in 
and tried to rush him off his feet. Through the 
whirling drift staggered Walter, dogless. 

“Where are those dogs?” asked the Doctor. 
He expects men to keep agreements made 
with him. He couldn’t get through the length 
and breadth of his big day’s work if they 
didn’t. 

Walter shook his snow-covered head. “ I 
ain’t brought ’em, sir. It’s too bad a night to be 
startin’ before sun-up. The dogs don’t know 
each other: they comes from here, there an’ all 
over. They’ll be fightin’ in the traces an’ eatin’ 
each other up in the dark. Us must be able to 
see ’em in order to drive ’em. You know what 
dogs is like, sir.” 

“ Yes, I do,” said Grenfell. “ But you’re the 
driver, and I leave it to you. We must get off 
as soon as we can.” 

Dr. Grenfell went to his room to snatch a cat¬ 
nap before the start. Another telegram woke 
him as he was drowsing off. 

“ Come along soon. Wife worse.” 


THROUGH THE BLIZZARD 287 

The storm instead of going down was more 
violent than ever when the grey day came. The 
sun was not seen at all. On the contrary, the air 
was filled with a mad whirl of pelting, stinging 
flakes almost as hard as Indian arrow-heads. 
The dogs would be no good in the teeth of such 
a storm—for the team-mates who work with a 
will are those that are best acquainted, and with 
an unknown driver this team suddenly thrown 
together would have pulled as many different 
ways as there were fierce and headstrong dogs. 
They would be at each other’s throats before 
they were out of sight of the houses. 

As he waited, walking restlessly up and down, 
in his brown sweater and thick leggins, Grenfell 
was plagued with the picture of the woman 
fighting for her life till help should come from 
the one man who could give it. 

Still another of those telegrams! This time 
the message read: “ Come immediately if you 
can. Wife still holding out.” 

Just as he read the words, there were voices, 
and battering hands at the door. 

Two men, white as Santa Claus from head to 
foot, staggered into the room, with the wind 


288 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 
whooping at their backs as if in a wild anger that 
they escaped its clutches. 

Grenfell, accustomed as he was to the brave 
men of a hard country, fairly gasped when he 
saw them. 

“ Where did you come from?” 

“ We comes to fetch you, sir, for the sick 
woman at Cape Norman.” 

“ Do you think dogs can get me there now? ” 
the Doctor asked, anxiously. 

“ No, sir. We was blown here most o’ the 
way, wi’ the wind at our backs. The wind drove 
us. The dogs can’t make head against it, not 
till the wind shifts clean round the other way, 
sir.” 

Ten miles of their journey had been in the 
fairly sheltered lee of the land. Twenty miles 
had been before the pitiless sweep of the wind 
over the unprotected sea-ice. If the snow had 
not drifted so heavily, they would have been 
borne along at a pace so rapid that their sled 
would have been wrecked. 

“When was it you left Cape Norman? ” was 
the Doctor’s next question. 

“ Eight o’clock last night, sir.” 


THROUGH THE BLIZZARD 289 

So they had been coming on all through the 
night, without rest or food. Yet the first thing 
they had done when the sled stopped at last be¬ 
fore Grenfell’s door was to get something for 
their dogs to eat. Already, the animals lay snug 
and tranquil in a drift, as if it were a feather¬ 
bed—sleeping the sleep of good dogs who have 
done their work and earned their daily fish-heads 
and know of nothing more to want in this life or 
the next. 

The Doctor patted the broad shoulders of the 
gaunt, shy spokesman. “ Go into the hospital 
and get a good, big, hot dinner,” he said. 
“Then go to bed. We’ll wake you when it’s 
time to start.” 

But after dark—and the darkness came on 
very early—the two troubled men were at Gren¬ 
fell’s door again. “ Us couldn’t sleep, sir, for 
thinkin’ of the woman. Us have got another 
telegram sayin’ please to hurry. The storm is 
not so bad as it was, sir. If you think fitten to 
start, we’re ready.” 

“ Call Walter,” said the Doctor. 

“ Us has called he, sir. He’s gettin’ the dogs. 
He’ll be here in a minute.” 


290 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

Grenfell and his comrades knew that the lull 
in the storm did not mean the end of it. It was 
gathering strength, and might at any moment 
break loose again with redoubled fury. But he 
—and they—couldn’t stand waiting any longer. 
They must go. It was as if out of the black 
distances they heard the thin, far, pleading voice 
of the sufferer calling to them, to come and save 
her. 

Their first task was to get across the harbor of 
St. Anthony in the dark and the eddying snow. 
They had their snowshoes, but in spite of these 
they sank to their knees in slush, and the two 
dog-teams floundered and half-swam. The 
team from Cape Norman went first, to encour¬ 
age the others. A man stumbled ahead of them 
all, to break out a footway. Walter trudged in 
advance of the rear team, with Grenfell driving 
an assortment of beasts he had never handled 
before. Only a dog-driver knows what that 
means. 

Ascending the flank of the hill across the 
harbor, they found themselves almost over¬ 
whelmed by the deep snow, with more piling 
down from above, as they fought their way foot 



Where Four Feet Are Better Than Two 









THROUGH THE BLIZZARD 


291 


by foot up the hill. They had to take hold of 
the sleds and lift them to help the dogs, and the 
sweat rolled off them in spite of the keen bite of 
the cold. When they topped the rise at last, the 
wind struck them full force, so that their loudest 
shouts could not be heard in the roaring onrush 
of the wind. The slope was a steep glaze of 
ice, and down it they coasted, running into tree- 
trunks and rocks that threatened to wrench the 
sleds and injure the dogs and men. It was 
hardly better when they reached the bottom. 
Here the Bartlett River became their necessary 
roadway, and twice Grenfell and others broke 
through into the swirling current and were 
almost carried away to be drowned under the 
ice. 

Down-stream they battled their course—no 
wonder “ Battle Harbor ” is the name of the 
Labrador inlet not far away. It is a battle to 
get anywhere in winter on this coast. At half¬ 
past one in the morning they came to where the 
twenty-mile stretch of sea-ice began. 

After that experience of a few years before on 
the ice-pan, Grenfell would not have been to 
blame if he had called a halt and said, “ No, not 


292 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

out there! Let us take the longest way round, 
by the shore, and be safe.” 

But that has never been his way. When duty 
calls, he takes the air line to the scene of action. 
So it was on this awful night. It had taken six 
hours to do ten miles. The sea was throwing 
the ice about with a mighty booming and crash¬ 
ing like the firing of cannon. The blizzard 
stung their faces and lashed their bodies. Gren¬ 
fell was ready to dare the passage. But the 
men who came for him would not have it so. 
His life was precious in their sight: and they 
knew what its preservation meant to all that 
helpless lonesomeness of the winter coast. 

It lacked six hours to daylight. If they 
waited, the dogs would not freeze, but men 
might suffer, and perhaps lose their lives. 

But the rugged pair from Cape Norman said 
that in the preceding fall someone had put up a 
“ tilt ”—a log refuge—in the woods near by. 
They roved about until to their exceeding joy 
they found it. 

There was not merely a shack of spruce-logs. 
In the shelter there was a stove, and beside 
the stove was a pile of wood. It is the habit of 


THROUGH THE BLIZZARD 293 

the men of the North to think of those who come 
after them. They who have been through a 
winter understand what it means to depend on 
others and have others depend on them. Those 
who do not play the game that generous, open- 
handed, far-sighted way have no friends and are 
despised by their neighbors. 

The dogs fell asleep in the snow. One of the 
Cape Norman men “ bust open ” the river with 
his axe and filled the kettle for tea. But even 
while Grenfell was fussing with the knots of the 
dunnage bag to get out the tea and the sugar, he 
heard his comrade’s pipe fall to the floor. 

Grenfell looked up. The good soul, standing 
erect, was fast asleep. It had been sixty hours 
since he had slept, and forty-eight of these had 
been spent on that terrible trail where there was 
no trail. Flesh and blood rebelled at last. 
Even the records of ambulance-drivers in the 
war have seldom equalled such endurance. The 
sleeper was roused and put on the bench. He 
tried again to stuff his pipe with his frightful 
rubbish called tobacco. But the pipe clattered 
to the floor again: he was dead to the world: his 
snoring shook the peace of dreamland, and 


294 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 


would have broken the glass in the tilt if there 
had been any glass to break. 

What might be called dawn came at last, but 
with it the snow returned fast and thick as the 
flies and mosquitoes of a Labrador spring. 

The snow cut off their view of the sea, but 
they heard it roaring as though possessed of all 
the devils. 

Over that roaring there seemed to come to 
their ears again the still small voice of the woman 
in misery—hopeful, waiting for them, trusting 
the Doctor who had never failed her yet. 

They were not the sort who would say sea-ice 
was impassable, if humans and dogs could 
traverse it. 

But examination showed that there was no way 
over the partly frozen sea. 

Greatly against their will, they must take the 
roundabout route overland. By two in the 
afternoon the ice held sufficiently to let them 
cross to Crow Island, and there they tried to 
boil water and make tea. The blizzard de¬ 
feated them. In the blinding snow, they set 
their course by the compass, and the dogs 
plunged on. They said nothing to the dogs after 


THROUGH THE BLIZZARD 


295 


that, but let them follow their own cold noses. 
The wonderful beasts took them straight to a 
tiny shore village. A short dash from the 
village, and the long run was over. In a jiffy, 
Grenfell had out the surgical instruments and 
put the patient under ether. To-day the woman 
is not merely alive but in the best of health, and 
she thinks of Dr. Grenfell as the Greeks used to 
think of a god. 


XVII 


WHY THE DOCTOR WAS LATE 

We have seen by this time that Grenfell does 
not rush slam-bang into danger for the mere 
sake of “ the tumult and the shouting,” like a 
soldier of fortune. 

Once he said to me: “ I’m like these dogs. 
Every time they hear a fight going on at the 
other end of the village they feel that they have 
to get into, it, and off they go, pell-mell. When¬ 
ever I hear of a good scrap in progress anywhere 
in the world, my first impulse is to drop every¬ 
thing else and get into the struggle. Then I 
realize that I’m serving my fellow-man as truly 
by staying just where I am, and trying to do my 
duty in my place.” 

He is fearlessly willing to spend his life in 
heroic deeds: but he always has a definite pur¬ 
pose in view: he is not posing for the motion- 
pictures. So when he harnesses his dogs to go 
on a journey we may be pretty sure that at the 
other end of the run there is some man, woman 


WHY THE DOCTOR WAS LATE 297 


or child who needs the Doctor, and who takes 
the medicine of hope just from seeing him at the 
bedside, before he has done anything with a 
knife or a needle. 

In the spring of 1919 the Doctor had to go to 
New York. It wasn’t a sick person this time: it 
was a board of directors that wanted to hear his 
report on his work, and was to discuss with him 
big plans to raise $1,500,000 for an endowment 
fund to carry it on. A Seamen’s Institute, a 
string of hospitals, several mission steamers, an 
industrial school and a number of dispensaries 
take a lot of money to run, even with many 
volunteer helpers. 

Most of us, if we find it inconvenient to attend 
a meeting, telephone or write politely to say we 
have the laryngitis or the shingles or some other 
good excuse, and are very, very sorry that we 
cannot come. 

But Grenfell, having said he would be in 
New York at the end of May, was bound to be 
there in spite of fog and bog, sea and snow and 
berg, if it was humanly possible. I remember 
his story of what happened as vividly as though 
it were yesterday, for I also had an appointment 


298 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

with him at that time—and he was only a month 
late in keeping it. 

He had written me: 

“ I am in a terrible state about my boat: she is 
still in the blockade of ice, after two months 
fighting it. It is harder to beat than the Huns, 
but I am very anxious you should come with 
me, even if we have to canoe down the coast.” 

The story behind his finally successful attempt 
to reach New York on that occasion is as fol¬ 
lows: 

He set apart a month to make the journey, 
which in open summer weather would require 
only a week. He meant to go round the north¬ 
ern tip of Newfoundland, from his headquarters 
on the east coast at St. Anthony. 

He planned, therefore, to go by dog-team 
northward to the Straits of Belle Isle, and then 
alongshore rounding Cape Bauld and Cape 
Norman, and on down the west coast to the rail¬ 
road at Curling which would take him to Port 
aux Basques. At the latter place, the south¬ 
western corner of Newfoundland, an ice-break¬ 
ing steamer would carry him over Cabot Straits 
to North Sydney, and there he could get a 


WHY THE DOCTOR WAS LATE 299 

train which would make connections for New 
York. 

There is what dogs would consider a fair 
route alongshore on the western coast. And the 
dogs’ opinion is worth considering. 

But there sprang up a continuing gale, with a 
blizzard ih its teeth. It rocked and hammered 
and broke the ice with the fury of great guns 
round about the headlands. As the trail for 
much of the way lay along the sea-ice, it would 
have been as impossible for the dogs to go by it 
as it was to make that short-cut across the bay 
when Doctor and dogs had that terrible experi¬ 
ence on the ice-pan. 

“ Very well then,” said Grenfell, “ we’ll try 
a motor-boat.” 

Motor-boating is fun enough in summer on 
the placid reaches of the Delaware or the Hud¬ 
son, but it is a very different matter on the coast 
of Newfoundland, in a narrow lane between 
great chunks that have broken off a Greenland 
glacier and lean brown crags with the sea crash¬ 
ing white and high upon them. If he went in 
a motor-boat, Grenfell would have to be on the 
lookout day and night for ice-pans and bergs, 


300 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

lest they close in and crush his boat as an 
elephant’s tread would squash a peanut. 

When the blizzard that had spoiled the ice 
eased off, Grenfell had his boat ready. After 
two or three days of creeping in the lee of the 
rocks and trying to keep out of the clutch of the 
breakers, he would find himself at a point where 
he could begin a lonely trek overland, a hundred 
miles to the railroad, with his pack of food and 
clothing on his stalwart shoulders. 

Just such a lonely walk as that many a sealer, 
fisherman or clergyman has made. If night 
overtakes a man, and he is far from a hut, he 
kicks a hole in a drift, lines it with fir boughs, 
makes his fire and crawls in snugly. He finds 
snow-water will not hurt him if he mixes it with 
tea or sugar. Grenfell, accustomed to hiking 
with the dog-team, felt no dread of a night with 
a snow-bank for his feather-bed. 

The start was made auspiciously. The ice 
kept well out of the way till Grenfell, who had 
one man with him, cleared the harbor. As they 
went on, however, the east wind spied the bold 
little craft, and came on like an evil thing, to 
play cat-and-mouse with it. 


WHY THE DOCTOR WAS LATE 301 

It brought in the ice, and the ice was con¬ 
stantly pushing the boat toward the shore, 
toward which the current was pulling like a re¬ 
morseless unseen hand. 

“ Keep her off the rocks, Bill!” warned the 
Doctor, poling vigorously at the stem. 

“ I’m tryin’ to, sir. But the wind is wonder¬ 
ful strong, and I’m thinkin’-” 

Whatever Bill was thinking, he was rudely 
interrupted by a rock that did not show above 
the surface. They were in a most perilous posi¬ 
tion. The boat, caught on the tidal reef, tossed 
to and fro, and the propeller, lifted high out of 
water, whirled like an electric fan. Through a 
hole in the prow the water rushed in. The two 
men sprang to the leak and stuffed it with their 
hats and coats and anything on which they could 
lay their hands. 

Fortunately the hole was not large, and as they 
had hammer and nails and pieces of board for 
such an emergency they managed to shut out the 
water with rude patchwork. They bailed the 
boat and shoved it off again, and crept onward. 
But the thermometer dropped fast, and in the 
intense cold the circulating pipes froze and 


302 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

burst. That damage, too, was laboriously re¬ 
paired, and they went ashore and spent the night 
under the glittering starlight with no coverlid 
but juniper boughs, beside a roaring fire. The 
next day they saw that the ice had so closed in 
to the southward that their little boat could not 
possibly go forward. 

They must, therefore, retreat to St. Anthony, 
and try to get round the Cape and into the 
Straits of Belle Isle. 

But they found they were now shut off even 
from their home port of St. Anthony! 

Leaving the motor-boat at a tiny fishing- 
hamlet, they borrowed a small rowboat, and went 
out to “ buck the ice.” 

The ice “ made mock of their mad little 
craft.” While they were hunting to and fro 
for crevices through which they might work 
their way, their old enemy the east wind was 
narrowing the channels till they saw that the tiny 
cockle-shell must soon be caught in the grip of 
the ice-pack and crushed to flinders. 

“Jump out, Bill!” commanded the Doctor, 
setting the example. “We’ve got to lift her 
onto the pan!” 




WHY THE DOCTOR WAS LATE 303 

They seized the prow and hauled with might 
and main. 

But the boat was doomed. They could not 
pull the stern free in time. The ice came on, 
ramming and jamming—and in an instant the 
stern was cut off, and was crushed to kindling- 
wood. The ice chewed the splinters savagely, as 
a husky gnaws a bone. 

This time there was no question of repairs. 
They had half a boat, and the gaunt cliffs of the 
shore were far away, with bits of ice dotting 
the black water between. 

They had their guns, and they fired at inter¬ 
vals to signal to the shore. 

“ Evidently there ain’t nobody at home,” Bill 
remarked grimly. The pan was taking them 
out to the sea, just as it did with Grenfell and the 
dogs on that earlier memorable occasion. 

Bill was a venturesome soul. “ I’m going to 
copy,” he announced briefly. 

That meant, as I have explained, that he 
would jump from one cake of ice to the next. 
Eliza crossing the river-ice in “ Uncle Tom’s 
Cabin ” was nothing to the feat he set himself 
in that perilous, pitiless northern sea. There 


304 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 
was no causeway to the land. He would have to 
do as a lumberman does in a log-jam, jumping 
before the object he has stepped on has time to 
sink with him. There would be no chance to 
think. He would have to keep on the move 
every instant, and death might be the penalty of 
a misstep. 

“ Mebbe,” said Bill, as coolly as though it 
were a question of running bases at a ball-game, 
“ mebbe I’ll git close enough to the land so some 
o’ the boys ’ll see me. Lend me your boat-hook, 
will you, Doctor? ” 

The Doctor, who would rather have taken 
the water-hazard himself, passed over the boat¬ 
hook. 

Bill jumped from pan to pan, nimble as a 
goat. Fortune seemed to be favoring the brave. 
His leaps would have broken records at a track- 
meet. Sometimes he put out the boat-hook after 
the manner of a pole-vaulter, and flung himself 
with its aid across a terrifying chasm. 

But as Grenfell watched and waited in 
suspense, all of a sudden, to his acute dismay, he 
saw the pole slip from his comrade’s grasp. 

Bill staggered on the edge of a pan, and gave 


WHY THE DOCTOR WAS LATE 305 


a desperate wrench of the body to save himself 
from falling. In vain. In another instant he 
was struggling in the waves. In a moment more 
the pans might crush him, or he might be so 
benumbed that he could make no further effort 
to help himself. 

While the Doctor stood there in mental 
anguish because he could do nothing to help 
his comrade, he saw Bill with a desperate effort 
throw a burly leg over the edge of the pan and 
scramble out, seemingly none the worse for the 
ducking. 

All Bill could do now was to stand on his pan 
and let the wind and the sea take him where they 
would. 

Grenfell kept on shooting, but there was no 
response from the shore. 

Bill’s pan crept nearer and nearer to the 
Doctor’s—but not near enough to let Bill get 
back. 

At last the shooting was answered. 

They saw the flash of an oar—always the first 
signal of rescue under these conditions—and a 
boat hove in sight. 

The two men on the ice shouted excited 


306 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 
encouragement to each other at the same in¬ 
stant. 

The rescuers were not less joyful than the 
rescued. Such events as this have led some of 
the fishermen to believe that Grenfell leads a 
charmed life, and that the winds and the seas 
are aware that he is their master. 

He had now spent a precious month in trying 
to break the ice-blockade. Since the ice had 
backed away a short distance from the coast, 
Grenfell now thought he might use the mission 
steamer herself, the brave Strathcona, to get 
round the northern end of the peninsula and so 
follow his original plan of a journey down the 
west coast. Compared with the Strathcona, the 
mail steamer was palatial luxury. 

All went well enough till they came to the 
Straits. There it was the old story. The ice 
was piled mountainously, in a barricade that 
meant a long siege to penetrate. What was still 
worse, it closed in suddenly about the ship, just 
as it has so often embraced Arctic explorers. 
The Strathcona might not be able to rid herself 
of the encumbrance for many days, perhaps for 
several weeks. 


WHY THE DOCTOR WAS LATE 307 


One way was left—to walk. The distance 
was ninety miles—and what miles they were! 

Like the snail, he had to carry all his baggage 
on his back. It included a frying-pan, blankets, 
food, and a suit of clothes fit to wear at the 
meeting of the board of directors,—a sufficient 
burden for two human shoulder-blades. Mrs. 
Grenfell remained aboard the Strathcona. It 
was to take her down the east coast to the rail¬ 
road at Lewisporte, when the ice released its 
hold on the ship. In time, if all went well, she 
would join her husband in New York. 

It was a hard and lonely journey for Grenfell 
for the next three days. Thirty miles a day was 
as much as he could do over a beach piled high 
with gnarled, weather-worn rocks and ice carved 
by the sea into strange forms, and flung into 
rough sugar-bowl heaps. When night came, 
for want of soft snow-banks into which he might 
dig for a snug bed, he scraped himself a place in 
the wet sand and built a fire and dried his clothes 
to the tune of a raving wind. He knew the mail 
boat was expected at any time at Flower’s Cove, 
and if he missed it he would have to wait a fort¬ 
night, at least, for its next southward journey. 


308 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

In spite of the discomfort of sleeping on the 
ground, and the fear that he might reach the 
Cove just too late to catch the steamer, his rest 
was sound and sweet, while it lasted. But he 
let himself have very little of it, because of the 
need of forcing the pace, and we can easily im¬ 
agine that it was a man thoroughly ready for a 
night in bed who rapped at Parson Richard’s 
door at Flower Cove when the three days’ hike 
was over. 

“Well, well, Doctor!” Parson Richard’s 
face was a warm and beaming lamp of welcome. 
“Come right in! Why didn’t you telegraph? 
You know there’s nobody I’d rather see than you. 
—Mary!” he called. “ Get the Doctor a cup 
of tea—and let him have a piece of that caribou 
steak we’ve been keeping. It sure is good to see 
you, Doctor! Now we’ll have a fine chance to 
talk, when you’re rested. The mail-boat won’t 
be along till to-morrow morning. There are so 
many things I want to tell you about and ask 
your advice.” 

Grenfell had tugged off his rubber boots and 
sat in a cushioned chair with his feet luxuriously 
outstretched to the stove. Now that the hard pull 


WHY THE DOCTOR WAS LATE 309 

afoot from cove to cove was over, it would be 
comparatively luxurious travel the rest of the 
way. He could probably have the full length 
of the table to sleep on, in the dining-saloon of 
the Ethie when the dishes were cleared away. 
Since it was the beginning of the season, and 
southward-bound travel was slack, he might 
even get a berth to himself. 

But a frowsy-polled messenger just at that 
delicious moment of warmth and reverie threw 
open the front door without the ceremony of 
knocking, and a blast of wind swirled after him. 

Parson Richards in his thin, worn coat 
clasped himself like a cabman and shivered. 
“ Shut the door, Tom! What is it? ” 

The pale and agitated messenger could hardly 
stammer out the words. 

“ It’s—it’s Abe Gould, sir! ” 

“ What has Abe Gould done now? ” 

“ He’s shot himself in the leg! ” 

“ Well, well, is it as bad as all that? ” asked 
the good man, his brow furrowing with anxiety. 
“ We must come right off and see what we can 
do.” 

“ He’s bleeding to death! ” 



310 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

Parson Richards turned to Grenfell. “ Now 
you stay right here, Doctor!” 

The Doctor was already hauling on his wet, 
stiff boots. 

“ No, no,” protested Grenfell, as if somebody 
had suggested a joy-ride and he didn’t want to 
miss it. He turned to the boy. “Take me to 
him, Tom. How far is it? ” 

“ Five miles, sir,” said the trembling lad. 
“ Oh, do come, please, sir, and hurry up. He’s 
bleeding to death.” 

“ Have you dogs? ” 

“ No, sir.” 

“ Can you get any? ” 

“ No, sir. All the good dogs is away.” 

“ Then we’ll walk—or run,” Grenfell smiled. 

He left the tea with the spoon in it, and did 
not even stop to thrust a bit of bread into his 
pocket. 

“ How did it happen? ” he said, as they started 
the jog-trot from the door. 

“ He was cleanin’ a gun, sir, and it went off 
and shot him in the leg.” 

Not much more was said. Man and boy 
needed all the breath they had for that five-mile 


WHY THE DOCTOR WAS LATE 311 


marathon over rocks and stumps and snow in 
the biting wind. Grenfell remembered the 
cross-country runs of the “ harriers ” at Oxford. 
Then, it was smooth going through fields and 
meadows and down the winding rural lanes. 
Then, he ran after nights of comfortable sleep, 
and with good fuel for the human machine. 
Now he had to make speed when he was hungry 
and after three broken nights of lying on damp 
sand. What a difference! 

But the old zest of life and youth came flood¬ 
ing back to him—the thought of the good he 
could do was a spur to keep him going at top 
speed. Of old he ran for a ribbon, a medal or 
a cup. Now he was running for a life. So 
often his errands, afoot or behind the dogs, had 
that guerdon before them—and what prize of 
victory was more valuable than that? 

The boy had hard work keeping up with the 
man—the man who always had kept himself in 
the pink of condition, whose frame never failed 
to serve him when he called on it for a sudden, 
extra strain. 

Grenfell remembered the war service of the 
young fellow he ran to help. Abe Gould was 


312 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 
but twenty. As a member of the First Regiment 
of Newfoundland, 5,000 young men picked from 
the 250,000 islanders, he had given four years of 
his life to the world war, in France and Flan¬ 
ders. Then he had come home, and with his 
honors, and the tales of his bravery on all 
tongues and in all ears, he had gone back quietly 
to scraping the fish and mending the nets as 
though he never knew another life or another 
country. 

As they ran on with hearts pounding, the one 
big question that kept asking itself in the Doc¬ 
tor’s mind was, “ Am I too late?” He forgot 
everything else—the battle with the ice-pack, the 
possible fate of the Strathcona, the weary 
trudging round the northern promontory. 
Nothing mattered except the brave young 
soldier, whose blood was ebbing away clock- 
tick by clock-tick, as they hastened to his side. 
That five miles seemed longer than the ninety 
miles he had covered in the three preceding 
days. 

He was no longer stiff and lame—the need 
of him seemed to have put wings on his heels as 
if he were Mercury. 


WHY THE DOCTOR WAS LATE 313 

There was the little grey house at last. The 
panting boy at his side gasped out, “ My 
brother’s there! ” 

Grenfell fairly fell against the door. It was 
flung open instantly. The room was crowded 
with people who sobbed and sniffled and wrung 
their hands: and none could do anything to help. 

“ The Doctor! ” they cried. It was almost as 
if Christ Himself had come. 

The young soldier lay on a hard table, flat on 
his back. Imagine his conscious agony. What 
was left of his leg had been laid on a feather 
pillow and to stop the flow of blood his foot was 
strung up to the ceiling. Blood and salt water 
soaked his garments and dripped to the floor, as 
if he were a slab of seal-meat. 

Men and women alike were weeping, and tell¬ 
ing each other how fond they were of Abe, and 
what a good, brave lad he was, and how they 
would hate to lose him now. Trouble in this 
part of the world makes people singularly 
neighborly, and often in their need they are as 
children. They think that any stranger from 
outside, with better clothes than they wear, must 
know enough to doctor them. 


314 KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE NORTH 

Most of the people had to be sent from the 
room, for the sake of air and space and the poor 
boy’s comfort. Dr. Grenfell had no instruments 
for an operation. He had no medicines. But 
messengers went hither and yon, and picked up 
things he had left in the neighborhood for use in 
such a crisis. They came back with a knife or 
two, rusty and in need of sharpening, a precious 
thimbleful of ether, shreds of silk to tie the 
arteries, a small supply of opium. 

By the time they came back from their house- 
to-house search, Dr. Grenfell had wound a towel 
round the patient’s thigh, and twisted it with a 
stick in a u tourniquet ” that stopped the deadly 
ebbing of the blood. 

There wasn’t ether enough, but what he had 
was used. A man stood on each side and held 
the patient to the table. Grenfell had to pick 
out piece after piece of bone from the shattered 
leg with his fingers. It didn’t help at all when 
one of his helpers fainted at the gory sight, and 
fell across the body of the wounded man. The 
leg had to be cut off, eventually, but Abe’s life 
was saved. During the night that followed 
Grenfell’s ministration, the Doctor sat by the 


WHY THE DOCTOR WAS LATE 315 
table-bed, feeding the patient a sleeping-draught 
of opium now and then, to dull the awful agony. 
Not a wink of sleep did the great physician get, 
the long night through. But as he sat there, he 
was happy to think—that he had come in time to 
save Abe Gould. This more than made up for 
the fact that he was a month late for the meeting 
with those New York gentlemen. And when he 
finally reached them and told them why he was 
late—they forgave him. 

No wonder the fisher-folk of the Labrador 
swear by “ the Doctor ” and turn a deaf ear and 
a curling lip of contempt toward any who dares 
to talk against him. They have seen him on the 
firing-line of his work: he is their friend: they 
know what he did for them and theirs, and—men 
of few words as they are—they would in their 
turn do anything for him. 


THE END 























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